The Singularity
by JkPippa
Summary: Six rangers from different roads of life end up together in Corinth City just as evil rises again. But can rangers who have lost so much get back in the field and defeat Venjix?
1. When is a mission not a mission?

Jen sat in Alex's office, looking around her. She hadn't been to her ex's office in a long time, since he usually talked to her in the Squad Room now, and was amazed at how little it had changed.

It had always surprised her that Alex kept both plants and mementos in his office, since they gave him away as the sentimental type he was and tried so hard to hide. She could see a prototype of a morpher, some photo cubes and - her heart skipped a beat - the engagement ring he had given her. It was the same one she had given back, displayed in a little glass box on a shelf behind his desk. It made her feel uneasy so she looked away from it, looking at the plants on the other side of the room instead and wanting Alex to come in as soon as possible.

She had to wait a couple more minutes before the door opened and Alex walked in, a tablet in his hand.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, closing the door and walking towards the desk. "Got caught up in something, as usual."

She smiled. "It's alright. What's going on?"

He pressed a button on his console on the desk and all the crystal walls of his office went opaque. "I need your help with something."

"An opaque wall something. It must be serious."

"It's not serious, but it is important. Have you ever met Commander James Robertson?"

She sat in silence for a minute, trying to remember if she had seen him at the debriefing of the Ransik mission, which most of the commanders had attended. She shook her head. "I don't think he was at the Ransik debriefing."

"He probably wasn't. James is the head of the Applied Sciences Division. He barely ever goes to things like debriefings, no matter how important the case."

"You seem to know him well."

"We met when he asked for my help testing the Time Shadow Megazord. We've become good friends since then."

"So, the Applied Sciences Division. I'm not sure there's much I can do for them."

"Yeah, this isn't about the Applied Sciences Division. This is about James." Alex took a deep breath and looked at her briefly before looking down at the desk. "I need a favor."

"You need a favor or James needs a favor?"

"We both do," he looked at her again. "James conducts research aside from his work in Time Force and he's working on an interesting project right now. An important project."

"What kind of important project?"

"He's trying to document and study as much as he can about the Venjix Event - the near extinction event from early in the 21st century."

"I know what the Venjix Event is."

"Well, he found information on a woman. He could only find her by an alias, and he wanted to ask you if you'd interview her for him."

"Interview her for him? How?"

"Travelling back in time." His face expressed clearly just how obvious he thought that fact should have been to her.

"He wants me to travel back to the 21st century and interrogate someone for his research?" Jen said with a raised voice to show she was slightly insulted. "I have real work to do here, Alex. Real criminals to catch. We just came out of a war!"

"I know but-"

"But nothing. The answer is no. If he wants to interview this woman, he can do it himself." She got up to leave and Alex stopped her by calling to her.

"He fears it might happen again." She turned to look at him and Alex continued, "He thinks the technological moment right now is perfect for an event similar to the Venjix one." He pointed at the chair. "Please."

She sat back down. "I still don't understand why he can't do it himself."

"Like I said, this is research he's conducting aside from Time Force. He will admit it's a bit of a crazy theory for now. That's why he wants to know as much as he can about Venjix, especially where it came from and how it was defeated."

"And he can't leave his post at Time Force, but I can."

"It's a lot easier for you, yes. But that's not why he asked me to ask you. He wasn't at the Ransik debriefing but he read the transcripts. He thinks your knowledge of the time period and your capacity to work alone as well as a part of a team are impressive, and he thinks you show great empathy, which makes you great for the kind of interview he needs." Jen fixed her eyes on him as he listed her achievements. "I have to say I agree with him."

"So he doesn't want someone to go to the past to do this interview he wants-"

"You. He wants you to do it."

She blushed slightly. "I'm flattered, but even if I agree, how will I get there? It's not like Time Force will lend me a time ship to do research, no matter if it's for a commander."

"You won't be using one of Time Force's ships. You'll be using one of James' ships."

She looked at him, her face frozen in shock.

"One of James' time ships?" She heard herself repeat.

"Yes, his research labs have a small fleet," Alex said nonchalantly. "As for the permissions, don't worry. That's where I come in."

"And who will take care of my cases while I am gone? Alex, I need some time to think this through."

"I will."

Her eyes went wide. "You? _You_ will take my cases?"

"Personally. And I will do my best to close as many of them as I can."

And by that he meant all of them, Jen knew. Whoever this James Robertson guy was, he meant a lot to Alex if he was willing to be back on the street just so she could do this for him.

"He's a really close friend, isn't he?"

Alex didn't answer immediately. He got up and paced up and down the office a couple of times. He stopped and looked at her, as if he was trying to find the right words. "Shortly after we met, I found out, and not from him, that it was James who saved my life after Ransik attacked me. It was technology he had developed for his labs that saved me. He didn't bring it up or cash in on it, and I don't think he knows that I know he saved my life. It's his technology that keeps me alive, Jen, and yet, he has never mentioned a single thing about it."

"He sounds like a very humble man."

"He is. And if he asked me to shake Time Force from the foundation so he could test a theory, I would do it. I'm not letting you leave this office until you say 'yes'."

"If he means that much to you and if he asked for me specifically, how can I say 'no' to the man who saved your life?" She had gotten up and was standing very close to him.

He stepped away from her and sat down again. He took a couple of deep breaths while Jen sat back down. "Good, thanks for agreeing. Here are the details." He handed her the tablet he had been holding when he came in. "James will program one other stop in your ship. There's someone he'd like you to pick up before you get to Corinth. He will help you further with the interviews."

Jen did a quick scan through the information in the tablet. "All this equipment is at my disposal?"

"From James' labs, yes."

"You keep saying 'James' labs' instead of Time Force's-"

"That stuff doesn't belong to Time Force, Jen. This is not a Time Force mission. This is an everything goes research mission. All that stuff belongs to James, not Time Force." He opened his drawer and pulled out a black box. "However, this does belong to Time Force," he said, opening the box and holding it so she could see its contents. Inside was her morpher. She looked at it and felt like she was being reunited with an old friend. "Take good care of it."

She took the device and he put the box in front of her. "You can't put it on while you're still in this time. They can track it. It's still locked to your DNA." She put the device back in the box and closed it. "It's almost lunch time. Have lunch and meet me at the main gate. I'll take you to James' labs."

"Do I at least get to meet him before I leave?"

"He was very adamant that he would be too busy elsewhere to meet you before you left. Which is code for 'I need an alibi and I will make one'."

She smirked. "He sounds like a charmer."

"Well, I know you don't keep up with this kind of thing," Alex said getting up to lead her out of the office. "But he 's quite the ladies man. And the gentlemen's man too." He opened the door to indicate she should leave.

"I'll see you after lunch."

"See you."

After lunch, Alex drove her to what he kept referring to as 'James' labs'. James' labs turned out to be a very famous multibillionaire interplanetary applied sciences company that produced everything from ships to medication. Jen remembered something that had been in the news recently about this company.

"Alex." He grunted to let her know he was listening. "Wasn't this the pharma company that created the test for that alien plague that was causing all those deaths last year?"

"The test, the treatment and the vaccine. All developed personally by James."

"He developed them himself?" She scoffed, as if a such thing was ridiculous. "I'm sure that's what he told people-"

"The press release credited the research team of the pharmacological division for the development," Alex told her, briefly taking his eyes off the road to glance at her. "But James did it himself. I know that for a fact because his assistant kept calling me to drag him home. I never could, not until he was finished. He slept on the floor, ate poorly, and wouldn't stop talking to himself. I thought he had lost it. But then he developed the test, and right after that, the cure. You'd think that was enough but he wouldn't go home until he was sure both things would be available to anyone who needed them-"

"For free," Jen interrupted. "I saw it on the news. Very generous of him."

"That's James."

When they arrived, Alex got out of the car and she followed his lead. Jen waited while Alex talked to a nice looking young man who smiled at her.

"Sergeant Scotts," he said, walking up to her. "I'm Charles, Mr. Robertson's assistant. He told me about your mission and everything has been set up."

Jen was barely paying attention to him. She was looking around, searching for the gigantic portrait of James Robertson that was bound to be somewhere. Her eyes fell on Alex and Charles, who were looking at her as if waiting for an answer.

"Sorry, I got distracted by the surroundings."

"Yes, the atrium can be quite a sight," Charles commented. "Mr. Robertson has very fine taste and it is important for him that his employees like their environment." Jen wondered why there was no portrait and asked Charles about it. The young man let out a little laugh and smiled. "That's not how Mr. Robertson does things."

"I told you he is very humble," Alex reminded her.

"Please, come with me," Charles said and they followed him out of the atrium and through the various buildings, until finally stopping in a hangar where Jen finally saw the ship she would be using for this mission.

She was expecting something similar to the bulky, round, and yellow time ship Time Force had, but this ship was very different. It was much smaller, sleeker and the overall design was very elegant.

"Cool," she said, staring at it.

"The newest model. Interdimensional storage units allow for less weight and bulk, and it contains our most advanced engine and state of the art time travel technology," Charles recited. "And she's all yours."

"It doesn't need a big crew, then?" she asked, her eyes still glued to the ship.

Charles exchanged a look with Alex and cleared his throat. "I mean, she's literally all yours." Jen still didn't look away from the vehicle.

Charles looked at Alex for help. "He means the ship is yours, Jen," Alex repeated. "As in, it belongs to you."

That got Jen's attention. She looked away from the ship and over at Alex. "What do you mean the ship belongs to me?"

"Mr. Robertson thought it would be a nice thank you for accepting this mission," Charles explained.

"What am I supposed to do with my own time ship?" Jen asked him. She looked at Alex. "Why is your friend giving me my own time ship?"

"He read the transcripts of the Ransik debriefings," he reminded her, giving her a meaningful look. "Perhaps he thought you'd like to visit someone in your time ship."

Jen closed her eyes. "Alex, this is really not-"

"Necessary?"

"-kind of him," she said. "It sounds like a cruel thing to-"

"Do for someone who is in love with someone from another time?"

"-do to you," she finished.

He looked at her and his expression softened. Then he smiled at her. "You win some, you lose some, Jen." He looked at the ship. "I will take care of the permits every time you want to see him."

Jen didn't know what to say. This kind of thing was the reason she had fallen in love with Alex in the first place. He had arranged it so she could visit Wes whenever she wanted to, instead of hating her forever.

She looked at him as he looked at the ship. "I can't accept it." Both Alex and Charles looked at her for different reasons. "I will use it for the mission but I can't just keep the ship. I'm sure Commander Robertson will find better uses for it." There was a question in Alex's eyes. She looked away from him to stare pointedly at Charles who got the hint.

"I'll go double-check everything is ready for you, sergeant," he said, walking towards the ship.

Once they were alone, Jen and Alex just stared at each other in silence for a moment.

"James will not let this go."

"I'm over Wes."

Alex closed his mouth and looked at her. "Sorry, what?"

"I'm over him," she repeated, averting her gaze.

There was no need for any more explanations. "He wouldn't be the first love of your life you got over."

She closed her eyes, hurt by his words. "Alex, I'm sorry. I really thought I was doing the right thing for you-"

"This is not the time or the place to have this conversation." She nodded. "We'll talk when you come back if you want, but know that James will not let this stand. He will repay you somehow for helping him and he won't take no for an answer."

"Understood. I didn't pack or anything, what if it takes me longer than expected?"

"Knowing James, there are enough clothes of your size and style packed inside somewhere," he replied, glad to change the subject.

"How would he know my size?" she wondered as she walked towards the ship. "Did you tell him?"

"It's one of his many talents," Alex commented, walking behind her.

"Right." She remembered he mentioned James was a ladies' man. He probably had been with enough of them to guess sizes.

The inside of the ship was somehow even more spectacular to Jen. The ship was bright with many lights, the controls were elegant and the screens were sharp. It was a good example of the fine taste Charles had mentioned James had.

There was room for five people inside the ship, but it was obvious from the design that only one person was required to fly it.

"It seats five," she commented.

"Passengers," Charles told her. "She pretty much flies herself once she's been programmed. She will respond to commands and-" He pressed a button on the console and the screen showed a list of items. "-you can access all the equipment by pressing this button and then pressing the item on the screen."

Jen scanned the list of items. Some of the equipment seemed like odd things to pack for a research mission. She mentioned this.

"The ship is kept ready in case of an emergency. She is kept stocked with various equipment Mr. Robertson thinks may be useful."

Charles had said it before, but this time Jen noticed that Charles didn't refer to Commander Robertson by his rank. "Why do you call him 'Mr. Robertson'? You addressed me as sergeant."

Charles lean face went slightly red and he glanced at Alex. "James, I mean, Mr. Robertson doesn't like it when people address him by his rank."

"Or as 'Mr. Robertson'," Alex added, looking at Charles. "He asks everybody to call him 'James'."

"And everybody does," Charles added with a shy smile.

"Except his butler, who keeps referring to him as 'Master James', making him cringe every time." Alex and Charles both laughed, clearly remembering instances when this had happened.

"Why can't he just program his butler to call him James?" She asked. Surely a man of such wealth and wit knew how to program a household robot. Or had someone to do it for him.

Charles and Alex exchanged another knowing look. "James' butler is not a robot, Jen."

Jen just looked at them and then her eyes fixed on Charles. His personal assistant also wasn't a robot. Clearly James Robertson had a lot more money and charm than she had thought.

"You're not an android," she told Charles.

He shook his head. "One hundred percent human."

"And you are one of James'…" she didn't know how to put it politely. She didn't want to call him 'servant'.

"I serve James with great pleasure, sergeant. It's no big deal. His closest staff are all humans."

"James doesn't entirely like robots. He tolerates them as the part of life they are but he prefers working with humans," Alex told her. Ladies' and gentlemen's man, she remembered. "The story of his personal staff is fascinating but we'll save it for another day because whatever alibi he's giving himself for this won't last too much longer. You need to leave."

"Just sit down and buckle up. Put your right palm on the reader. The ship has been locked to your DNA, and, like I said, she will fly herself," Charles instructed. He handed her a black gauntlet for her left hand, which had a beautiful pattern on it. "This control gauntlet will also give you access to the equipment and you'll need these." He handed her two small metallic bars. "James has been developing them for Time Force. Quantic police batons." He took a moment to explain how they worked.

"Why would I need these?" she asked, looking at Alex. He had given her her morpher back too. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

Alex shook his head and looked at Charles who smiled. "James likes to cover all the bases. These are just precautions in case you run into trouble."

"Right," she said, not entirely convinced they were telling her the full truth.

Charles moved towards the door. "I was told you travelled in a Time Force time ship before. You will find your travel in this ship a lot more comfortable."

"Comfortable?" She really doubted being spun around at top speed could under any circumstances be comfortable.

"She doesn't spin, Jen," Alex told her with a smile, moving towards the door too. "You won't even notice she's moved."

With that, both men exited the ship. When they were a safe distance away, the palm reader glowed green, indicating the ship was ready for departure. Jen stared at it and swallowed. This James Robertson character sounded like the most eccentric billionaire she had ever heard of and here she was leaving everything behind for him without even meeting him.

As she put her hand on the reader, she wondered what she should ask James Robertson for as a 'thank you' present that wasn't the time ship.


	2. One More Stop

Chapter 2: Recruitment.

Jen was surprised that Charles and Alex hadn't been lying or exaggerating when they said the ship was downright comfortable.

The seat hugged her body and reclined comfortably and from the start of the launch sequence until the end of the landing sequence she didn't feel a thing and she didn't even hear noise from the engine. The ship remained still and silent throughout the entire journey. As if it hadn't moved at all.

Before getting out, she checked the files for her mission. Even though it wasn't technically a mission, she had found no other way to refer to it.

The other stop programmed on the ship was in the year 2025, just outside of Newtech City. She was there to find a cadet from the intergalactic law enforcement agency, SPD. This cadet, Bridge Carson, was a B-squad ranger - whatever that meant - and was specially skilled in interrogation and interviewing. The file said his DNA signature had been programmed into her scanner, which she could access by touching it on the equipment access screen, and it would lead her to him.

Jen debated whether she should change out of her Time Force uniform before leaving the ship, but then thought that if Bridge Carson was a cadet at what was essentially an intergalactic police force, her uniform would make the best impression.

She grabbed the scanner, a pair of sunglasses like the ones issued by Time Force but with James Robertson's famous fine taste, and pressed a circle in the beautiful pattern of her control gauntlet. She was teleported out of the ship and to the ground right next to it.

She put the sunglasses on and the scanner began its work, finally indicating to her, in a very pleasant voice directly to her ear, to walk straight ahead.

"I could get used to this," Jen said out loud, and she really could. Robertson's equipment was much better than Time Force's **:** it was cleaner, faster and generally worked better. She wondered why James Robertson hadn't shared all these little innovations with the Time Force, given he was the head of the Applied Sciences division.

She followed the scanner's instructions to a crime scene, which was crawling with SPD officers, all properly identified by their uniforms and badges. There was a buzz of activity and the scanner indicated that Bridge Carson was within 100 meters of her current location. She looked around, moving slowly so the scanner had time to scan each person.

She saw a tall, blond man whose uniform had details in blue and she prayed that was Bridge Carson because he looked very competent and secure. But he wasn't.

Bridge Carson, as her scanner informed her a moment later, was the one lying on the floor, staring at a stray cat. He looked at the cat fixedly for a few seconds and then blinked very slowly. Not paying him any attention in particular, the cat looked to both sides as he did this.

Jen approached him slowly, but her footsteps scared the cat away.

"No! No! Come back!" Bridge yelled after it from the floor.

"Cadet Carson?" Jen asked, taking off her sunglasses.

Bridge looked in her direction and saw her boots. He looked up as high as he could to see her silhouette against the sun.

"Bridge?" Jen asked again.

"Yes," the cadet said, getting up and running his hands over the front of his uniform to brush off the dirt. Then he ran his gloved hands over his buttocks to clean the gloves. "I'm Bridge Carson," he gave her a once over and stood a little straighter. "Ma'am."

Jen offered her hand. "Jen Scotts," he shook her hand distractedly, still looking around for the cat. "Sorry I scared your cat."

He smiled at her. "I have to find her, you see? She's a key witness in our investigation."

"The cat is a key witness?"

"She saw the whole thing, I'm sure. I was trying to calm her down. I know she knows more than she's letting on, you know?" Bridge crouched, looking around for the cat. "Retrieving her statement might be vital to our case."

"Right," Jen said, trying to make the moment less awkward. "Bridge, can I talk to you for a moment? This is important."

"Yeah, sure." He smiled at her. "I'm all ears, well, not literally all ears but... Sorry. Go ahead."

"I work with the Time Force," Jen showed him her badge. "We are a law enforcement agency that deals with time and all crimes committed against it."

"So, you're like a time traveler?" Bridge asked, his green eyes shining.

"Yes, I'm a time traveler. And I need your help with a mission."

Bridge looked around and then pointed at himself. "You need _my_ help? Or you need my team's help?"

"I was told you were very good at interrogations and interviews. And since they have you interrogating cats, I'm sure your capacities are exceptional." Jen tried not to sound cynical about it but she wasn't sure she had managed. Everything about Bridge, from his disheveled uniform to his messy hair, to the way he talked, made her doubt he had any special capacities for anything. She could almost imagine Alex, Charles and a dark, faceless figure who was James Robertson, laughing at her, thinking this was such a funny prank.

Bridge shrugged. "I have my talents," he wiggled his gloved fingers in front of her. "So, is this mission in the future?"

"The past, actually."

"Awesome! I've always wanted to go to the past. There is so much stuff in the past. But I wouldn't like to go to my own past, like, when I was in grammar school or something like that because that wasn't very fun, but the past past, like really in the past, I would love to go there. There are so many things I would love to see, and so many cool people I'd love to meet-"

"Well, we're only going to a specific moment in time," Jen said to stop the other officer's ramblings.

"When?"

"About a year after the Venjix Event."

"A year after the Venjix Event? But it's not because Venjix is back, is it? I mean, it can't be back, can it? Of course it's not back. If it were back, then this future would be changing and it hasn't changed, which means the past hasn't changed, which means Venjix can't be back, because if it were back, we would be in a different future, unless we already are in a different future and haven't noticed. Would we be able to tell if we were in a different future? What if the changes of the past have already been assimilated into this timeline, or unless there is another timeline-"

"Bridge!" Jen snapped to shut him up. He closed his mouth and looked at her with the same expression a puppy makes when he's told off. "Venjix is not back. We are only going to interview some people about it."

"Oh, cool," Bridge said looking much more relaxed.

"Are you coming, then?"

"Sure!" He looked around at the crime scene where they were standing. "But, can you bring me back to this same moment? I really need to get that cat's statement. Besides, we are in the middle of our fight against Emperor Grumm and I don't think commander Crugger would be too happy with me if I disappeared before Grumm is defeated. Where else would he get another green ranger? I guess he could always use someone from the C-squad but I don't think they're that ready-"

"I promise they won't even notice you've been gone."

They walked away from the crime scene, nobody really taking notice that Bridge was leaving with a stranger in a uniform nobody had seen before, because even if they did notice, they just supposed that was Bridge being Bridge and following what he thought was a potential lead.

When they got to the ship, Jen teleported them inside without delay.

"Wow," Bridge let out, looking around him once he was in the ship. "This is so cool".

"Don't touch anything," Jen warned. She looked around and then at Bridge, who was still admiring the ship. "She's a beauty, isn't she?"

"Yeah," the green ranger admitted. "Is she yours?"

Jen wasn't sure how to answer that. "Not really. She belongs to the people who sent me on this mission."

Bridge squinted at her as if he couldn't see her clearly. "Okay," he said after a few seconds, and smiled.

"Take a seat, I promise the trip will be pleasant."

Bridge sat down and found the way to adjust the seat to his body very comfortably. "This is very comfortable. The SPD ships aren't this comfortable. I mean, there's nothing wrong with them - they are fine - but they are not this comfortable, which is really comfortable, like really, really comfortable-"

"We'll be there in no time," Jen said distractedly, scanning the controls and waiting for the palm reader to turn green.

Bridge chuckled. "Nice one."

Jen looked at him questioningly.

"Because it's a time ship, right?" She still looked like she had no idea of what he was talking about, an expression Bridge knew all too well. "'We'll be there in no time', because it's a time ship."

Jen realized what she had said and chuckled. "No pun intended, I'm afraid." She put her palm in the reader and the ship indicated, only by a status message on the control panel, that it was moving through time to the year 2015, a year after the RPM ranger series team had defeated Venjix, the self-aware, self-replicating computer virus that had brought humanity within an inch of extinction with its army of robotic soldiers.

Jen opened the files, showing them to Bridge. "Okay, we're here to see this woman, Doctor K. That's an alias. Her real name is not on record."

"What does she have to do with Venjix?" Bridge asked.

They kept reading. "She created the ranger series program that defeated Venjix," Jen said. "And she coordinated Venjix's defeat."

"Well, I say we go find the doctor."

"Let's go, cadet. You should be back in your crime scene in-"

"No time!" He completed and they both giggled.

"Come on, we landed outside of the city dome. We have a short walk to get there."

She teleported them out of the ship. They landed in a desert and they were hit by the heat wave like a punch to the stomach. It felt like they had walked into an oven.

"Wow, it's a little hot here," Bridge said as he unzipped his jacket.

Jen imitated him and took off hers. "You can say that again."

The sunlight was very bright, so she put on her scanner so it would act like a pair of sunglasses and she used her gauntlet to find [create?] a pair for Bridge, who was squinting as much as he could without actually closing his eyes. The second scanner materialized in her hand and she handed it to him.

The cadet put it on and the scanner informed him it was scanning for mutant DNA. Bridge swallowed hard and looked down at his hands. The display on his scanner turned red, informing them that mutant DNA had been found right where he was standing. In a rather sudden move, Bridge clasped both of his hands behind his back.

"Everything alright?" Jen asked, weirded out by his actions.

"Why are my sunglasses scanning for mutant DNA?" He asked.

"It must be the default programming. Most mutants are criminals in my time. Ignore it. It's unlikely it will find anything."

"Is yours doing it as well?" Bridge tried not to sound nervous.

"No. Mine is programmed to find your DNA," she said. "Why? Are you getting something?" she asked, moving her hand to her ear to adjust her scanner.

"No!" Bridge said, slightly louder than he intended. "I was just curious."

But Jen had already adjusted her scanner and was looking in his direction, which meant she had probably gotten the same results he had.

"I can explain," Bridge said, raising his hands in front of him.

"You're a mutant?"

"But I'm not a criminal!"

"Of course you're not a criminal," she laughed off. "You're a police officer, not a criminal." She put her hand on his shoulder. "Besides, you're not the type of mutant we worry about."

He was completely dumbfounded. "Oh."

"Come on. We have to get out of this heat."

They started walking towards the Corinth city dome, which was about a kilometer away from where they were.

When they were almost at the entrance of the dome, unguarded now that Venjix had been defeated, Bridge stopped walking and starting looking around, like he had heard something.

Jen stopped and watched him, as he turned his head from side to side, then swept his hand in front of him like he was pushing a veil away.

"What is it?" Jen asked.

"Wait a sec," he said, turning on his heel and repeating the sweeping motion. He furrowed his brow and pursed his lips, taking off his right glove. He repeated the sweeping motion barehanded, turned and did it again. "Well, that's not very helpful."

"What's not very helpful?"

"I'm getting a faint signal of something that walked out of this gate, but it's too faint. I can't tell if it's human or alien or... something else."

"By something else you mean robotic?"

"I guess. The energy signature is too faint. I can't see clearly what it was. But it was unlikely to be a robot because there is an emotion lingering. I just can't identify it anymore. It's too degraded."

"Sorry, what? I'm not following."

Used as he was to use his telemetry powers around his teammates, Bridge hasn't realized that Jen didn't know about them and had no idea of what he was talking about. He turned to her and showed her his naked hand. "Sorry, my bad. I'm used to everybody around me knowing about my powers. I have telemetry. I can read auras and energy signatures and such. That's my mutation."

"Oh," Jen said, catching up. "And you felt someone leaving Corinth towards the wasteland?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

"That's the thing. It's likely it was one person. Not a group, like you would expect from an expedition to find more survivors. The energy is too faint so it's less than three people. I'm almost sure it's only one."

"And you say it's not a robot because there's an emotion?"

"Yes, there's an emotion. But I can't identify it."

"It's too faint?"

"Yes and no," Bridge started with a shrug. Jen took in a deep breath preparing for the green ranger's ramblings. "The emotion is the strongest trail left - far stronger than the energy print of this person - but I can't identify the emotion, like, it's hidden or covered by something else... have you ever tried not to feel something? Like, someone made you really angry or sad and you tried very hard not to feel angry or sad but that only made it worse inside you but the other person didn't notice because you tried not to feel it so they couldn't tell you were feeling it because you didn't show it, despite being feeling it? Have you ever hid an emotion so well you yourself thought you weren't feeling it at all?"

"I guess you could say something like that, yes."

"Well, this emotion is hidden like that, like this person was trying so hard not to feel it. They believed they weren't feeling it when in reality, they were really feeling it a lot but it was just very well hidden under... something else."

"Under what else?"

Bridge shrugged and put his glove back on. "I don't know. I can't even tell what emotion it was that was hidden."

Jen adjusted her scanner for human DNA and as far of a range as she could. She looked around them but there was nothing. Whoever had walked out of that gate was long gone by now.

"Well, I guess we can't do anything for them now," she said. "Come on. We have to get to the city before we melt under this sun."

"I wouldn't like melting under the sun," Bridge said pensively. "It would be a very painful and messy."

Jen said nothing and started walking towards the gate.

After a couple of minutes of walking, they reached the entrance of the Corinth City dome and were very happy to feel the fresh air coming from inside on their skin.

"This is not how I always imagined Corinth City was," Bridge said, looking around at the lively metropolis full of people on their way home from work, walking around carrying their groceries, eating ice cream with their children or walking their dogs.

"Me neither," Jen said.

The last standing city of mankind wasn't a mess of post-war bunks and badly distributed food and medical supplies, with people crying in misery, dirty and decrepit.

It was a state of the art, modern city full of happy citizens living life as if Venjix had never happened, or perhaps living better lives than before they came to the domed city.

Jen smiled, remembering the state of her own home in the aftermath of an interplanetary war that had made the gangs of mutants look like a lazy Sunday morning.

Humankind, always resilient. Always moving forward.

Always surviving.


	3. The doctor is out

Chapter 3: The doctor is out

As they walked deeper into Corinth City, it became obvious finding the person they were looking for wouldn't be as easy as they had originally thought.

"How do we find Doctor K?" Bridge asked.

Jen was checking the files from the mission, neatly displayed in a hologram over her left wrist, where she had been wearing her morpher since she had landed in Newtech City. The control gauntlet wrapped around the morpher, as if designed to hold it in place.

"The file only has her alias and that she lived in Corinth. No address. I guess a thousand years is a lot of time for records to survive intact."

"Whoa... A thousand years?!"

Jen looked at Bridge and realized she hadn't actually said when she came from. "Yes, a thousand years. Don't ask me anything though because I can't tell you anything." She looked back at her file.

"From a thousand years in the future?! Certainly there is one thing you can tell me, something small, it doesn't have to be a big deal, or from my future. Just something simple, please?"

She tried not to smile but his child-like enthusiasm was kind of adorable. She decided to humor him: "There is no junk food or desserts."

"No way!" Bridge sounded scandalized. "How do you live your lives without chocolate pudding?!"

Jen laughed at the innocence of his question. If only he knew what they had just gone through. "We focus on other things." She looked around and found a booth labelled 'Information'. She pointed at it for Bridge to see and they approached it. "I seriously doubt we can just ask for the last know residence of Doctor K," Jen told Bridge.

"Doctor K, certified non-hybrid human," the booth responded, giving them Doctor K's last known address.

"How do we get there from here?" Bridge asked.

The booth responded with a series of instructions. "Did you get that?" Jen asked.

"I have an excellent memory." He said, lightly tapping his temple.

They started walking following the booth's instructions and Jen picked up the subject of Bridge's powers again. "So, how does that work? Are you a psychic or something?"

"Or something. I have displayed some telepathic powers but they aren't really that strong. I can feel the energy around things or people, and I see it in colors, depending on their emotions, thoughts, intentions... I can also sort of see a recreation of what happened in a particular space, as long as whatever happened wasn't so long ago that the energy prints have faded completely."

"I was told you were skilled at interviewing and when you said you had powers I assumed the two things were related," she admitted.

"Well, I can tell if someone is lying or hiding something. I will see the changes in the colors of their auras," Bridge told her. "But I had the top marks in my interrogation class. I didn't cheat or anything. I didn't use my powers," he defended before she had the chance to argue. "I just payed a lot of attention to what was right in front of-" He crashed against a red haired young man who was carrying a box of peppers as he said this. "Oh, sorry!" Bridge said.

"No problem," the young man said with a smile and kept walking. He was wearing the very bizarre combination of a yellow shirt and zebra print pants.

Jen and Bridge watched him walk away before Bridge continued, "I just payed a lot of attention to what was right in front of me."

"That's great," Jen said. "I didn't assume you had cheated on your exam, by the way. I just wasn't told much about you and I didn't know what to expect."

They walked a few meters and then Bridge asked, "What about you? How did you end up here?"

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "I told you I couldn't tell you anything about the future."

"But you can tell me about you, can't you?"

She sighed. "I was asked to investigate as much as I could about the Venjix Event, I was given a time ship and a set of instructions and here I am."

"Did Time Force send you here? Wouldn't they know everything about Venjix?"

It was a fair question. "Well, we don't know everything about everything and very few trustworthy sources of information about the Venjix Event survived. The reports are either incomplete, exaggerated, novelized or otherwise compromised. And Time Force doesn't really do exploration or research missions."

Bridge furrowed his brow and pointed at her. "You said this was a research mission."

"And it is."

"But now you just said Time Force doesn't do research missions."

Jen kept her gaze away from Bridge and her back as straight as she could. "This technically isn't a Time Force mission."

"But you do work for Time Force."

"Yes. And so does the man who sent me here. He just sent me outside of Time Force's jurisdiction, that's all."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why send you outside of Time Force official jurisdiction if you both work for Time Force?"

Jen looked at Bridge, seeing why the kooky officer had aced his interrogation exam. He knew exactly which questions to ask. "I don't know."

Bridge gave her a long, hard look. "Yes, you do. What do you get from being outside of Time Force that you don't get from being inside of Time Force?"

"I guess he wanted to give me as much freedom of action as possible."

"Freedom of action for doing what?"

"I don't know, Bridge."

"How can you not know?"

"I never even met the man," she blurted out.

Bridge gave her a look full of suspicion but then he looked straight ahead and said nothing else.

They walked the rest of the way, which was not long, commenting on Corinth City and how beautiful it was. Finally, they got to the address where the booth had told them Doctor K lived. It was a square, tall, brown building with a garage door and absolutely no frills or embellishment.

"Well, this looks cozy," Jen murmured as they approached a small, pedestrian door, cut out from the larger vehicle door. She rang the intercom and then glanced over at Bridge as they waited for an answer. After a few seconds, she ran the intercom again. Still no response. "Guess she's not home," she said but noticed that Bridge was transfixed by the door handle.

He swept his hand over it twice and then took three steps back. From the new distance he swept his hand again. "Jen," he approached his companion. "It's a similar reading to what I felt outside of the city."

"The hidden emotion?"

"Yes. And the faint energy print. I don't think anybody is inside. In fact, I think-" He put his hand on the handle and pushed it downwards, opening the door. "-the door is open."

Instinctively, Jen withdrew her blaster and was impressed to see Bridge's first instinct had been to draw his. "Let's have a look," Jen said.

The opened the door and the space inside was rather dark, since it was late in the afternoon and the lights weren't on. Jen was still unsure of what to do about that when she heard a big switch move and snap in place with a loud 'clank'. Bridge had simply turned the lights on.

The space was very big. It was a two-storey garage with room for at least four or five cars, and a series of doors lined the wall at the back in two rows, one in each storey. There was also a living space, a small, open kitchen, a pool table and what looked like a reinforced door.

"I'll check upstairs, while you check down here. If you need me, call for me," she instructed. She moved as quietly as she could towards the stairs and climbed them, opening each door and finding an empty bedroom behind each one.

She heard a screech of metal grinding against metal and ran towards the stairs but she couldn't see Bridge from where she was.

"Bridge?" She called.

"Jen!" He called back. "You have to see this!"

She ran downstairs and saw that he had opened the reinforced door and was standing inside of what looked like a laboratory.

"This must be Doctor K's lab," Bridge told her.

"What happened here?"

They looked around in despair. Every single piece of technology in the lab had been somehow ruined, some to the point of absolute destruction. Other things merely had the cables pulled out with extreme force. They saw a white violin smashed amongst all the pieces. The lab trashed to the point where none of the tech could even be turned on - they checked and all the computers were non-responsive.

"What do you think happened to her?" Bridge asked.

Silence fell in the room because Jen didn't want to answer that question, and a part of her knew Bridge didn't want to hear the answer either.

As a way of not answering the question, she raised her wrist and started checking the files she had been given. "There's someone else we can ask for help and information," she started. "While we find out where Doctor K is. Another expert on the Venjix technology. Apparently he helped her efforts during the fight against Venjix."

"Where do we find him?"

"According to this," she groaned. "Almost on the other side of the city. But it looks promising. He's on the list of people we had to interrogate."

"What's his name?"

"Doctor William Cranston."


	4. See a man about a pizza

The house was modest but well cared for, with a small garden at the front and a little brick fence ran around the property. Jen opened the gate and walked to the front door, Bridge right behind her.

The front door was painted navy blue and had a small peep hole. She rang the doorbell. The sound of something similar to a full peel of church bells startled her since the sound suited a giant mansion rather than the small house they stood outside of. She and Bridge shared an amused look and she rang again.

"Hold on!" someone yelled from inside the house.

The door opened revealing a young man with dirty blond hair and green eyes, which were bright behind a pair of metal rimmed glasses. He was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and was drying sweat from his face. They had obviously interrupted his workout.

Before either one could say anything, he looked at their uniforms and shook his head softly, smirking. "I was wondering how long it was going to take," he said, stepping to the side to let them in.

"How long what would take?" Bridge asked as they walked into the man's home.

"How long until people in color coded clothes came by asking questions about Doctor K," the man said.

"Doctor Cranston, I presume," Jen said, offering her hand. "Jen Scotts."

He shook it. "Billy, please," he said, offering his hand to Bridge, who shook it briefly.

"Bridge Carson."

"Pleasure."

"You were a power ranger," Bridge said with a tone that sounded more surprised than he intended.

"I takes one to know one, I guess," Billy said. "Please, sit. Can I offer you anything to drink?"

"Water is fine," Jen said just to be polite as she and Bridge sat down in the blue couch.

Billy came from the kitchen with three glasses and a pitcher of water and poured each of them a glass.

"What did you mean 'asking questions about Doctor K'?" Bridge asked. "Do you know what happened to her?"

Billy looked at both of them, his brow furrowed. "Something happened to Doctor K?"

Jen and Bridge looked at each other. "You first," Jen said.

"Doctor K and I exchanged a plethora of communication and assistance during the fight against Venjix. I helped her several times when she got stuck, which didn't happen often, to be honest. I assumed you were here because I am obviously her associate, if you will."

"Her associate?"

"Yes."

"Not her friend?" Bridge asked, cocking his head to one side.

"I wouldn't call what I had with Doctor K a friendship, no. It was more of a collaboration on a very complex project."

"Right."

"You said something had happened to her, but you sounded uncertain of her whereabouts. What makes you think something happened to her?"

"We were at her lab, in the garage," Jen started. Billy sat up straight in his chair but didn't interrupt. "And it was trashed. The computers were so damaged they wouldn't turn on."

"Damaged how?" Billy asked, bringing the tips of his fingers to his chin.

"You know, thrown around, cables torn out, smashed parts. Trashed."

"And the Ranger Series morphers? Were they there?" Bridge and Jen looked at each other and shrugged, shaking their heads. Billy got up. "Come on, I need to see the lab for myself."

"Why? Do you think something bad happened to Doctor K?" Bridge asked.

Billy looked at him and knew that when Bridge said 'something bad', he meant 'something that has to do with Venjix'. "I last heard from Doctor K about two days ago. She sent me a very concerned email explaining her apprehension about the possibility of Venjix surviving inside her Ranger Series Program."

"Wait, she thought Venjix may have survived?"

"Yes," Billy sighed. "And unfortunately, when it came to Venjix, she was rarely wrong."

"You think Venjix had anything to do with what happened in that lab?" Jen asked, she and Bridge getting up too.

"I can't tell until I've looked at it," Billy said, grabbing a hoodie from the rack by the door. "Let's go, we don't have much time."

They made their way back to the garage quickly since now they were using Billy's car, and once they got inside, Billy hastily made his was way toward the lab. From the door, he looked around at the destruction and took a deep breath.

"What do you think?" Jen asked.

"Why did you come here? Where you summoned here?" Billy asked in turn.

"No," Jen said. "We asked at the information booth for Doctor K's last known address and it sent us here. Why?"

"Because this is not Doctor K's last known address," Billy said. "She doesn't live here or use this lab anymore."

"Then why did the booth send us here?" Bridge said.

Billy let out a slow, calculated breath but didn't answer the question. "I need to scan every inch of this lab and every single piece of equipment before I can tell you anything for sure."

"Do you think it's Venjix?" Jen asked bluntly.

Billy remained silent.

"How long will it take you to scan the lab?" the Time Force officer pushed.

"I have to put it back together first," Billy said, his eyes still scanning the trashed lab.

"How long will it take you to put it back together?" Bridge asked.

"By myself it will take me way longer than we have, and there isn't a lot of people who know how to deal with equipment this sophisticated and delicate, not to mention Doctor K's operating system was unique to her." Billy closed his eyes and let out a sigh as if steeling himself to do something unpleasant. He opened his eyes and turned to the other two. "Are you two hungry? I'm starving," he asked out of nowhere and walked towards the door. "Do you like pizza?"

"Pizza?" The officers echoed. They both thought the trashed lab and the possibility of Venjix returning to power were slightly more pressing than pizza.

"Yes, pizza. Do you like it?"

Bridge pointed at the lab behind him. "What about-?"

"I can't think on an empty stomach," Billy said and walked towards the door of the garage.

"Pizza it is, I guess," Jen told Bridge and they both walked out, following the scientist.

He drove around for a short while, parked on the side of the street and got out, resolutely walking towards a local restaurant with a sign that read "Jungle Karma Pizza" hanging outside it. It was rather late in the day now and the street was deserted.

The inside of the restaurant was decorated with plastic vines and plants, little wooden animal figurines and photos of animals. The upholstery of the booths was animal print and there were some small, round tables covered in little colorful mosaic tiles.

Billy sat down in one of the booths and Bridge and Jen sat across from him, neither one really understanding what was happening.

"What are we doing here?" Jen asked Billy, looking around.

"Eating," Billy answered dismissively.

Bridge squinted at Billy. "No, seriously, what are we really doing here?"

A beautiful blonde girl wearing a green t-shirt with the pizzeria's logo on it, an orange apron and zebra-print pants approached their booth. They were the only customers in the restaurant.

"Good evening, welcome to Jungle Karma Pizza. I'm Lauren and I'll be your waitress tonight," the girl said as she handed them menus which featured pizzas named things like 'Soy Safari', 'Thrilla Gorilla' and 'Herbivore Heaven' on it.

Jen and Bridge had barely had time to look at the menu when Billy said, "We'll have a large Mount Kilimanjaro."

Lauren took the menu from Billy, who had collected them, with a smile. "Excellent choice. The chef makes those personally."

"I know," Billy said with a smile. "Is RJ still the chef or do you have someone new?"

"It's still RJ," Lauren answered happily. "I don't think anything will ever get him out of that kitchen. Are you a regular? I don't think I recall seeing you around before."

"I was a regular back in Ocean Bluff," Billy said. "I was happy when I discovered that good old JKP made it all the way to Corinth."

The smile on Lauren's face wavered the tiniest bit and then it was back in place. "Well, you'll be happy to know RJ brought all his recipes and abilities with him from Ocean Bluff."

"I'm counting on it," Billy told her, still smiling.

"Anything else?" Lauren asked, looking at Jen and Bridge, who had been watching the conversation in awe.

"I'll have a soda," Jen said clumsily.

"Me too."

"And I'll have a chat with RJ, if you don't mind," Billy said, his smile still there. He looked away from Lauren and crossed his hands over the table. "Tell him Billy's here to see him and while you're at it, tell him I know he's here, because you already messed up by letting that slip."

This time, the smile on Lauren's face did disappear completely. It was replaced by a worried expression and she turned, walking swiftly towards the kitchen.

"What was that?" Jen asked Billy.

"The only way to deal with RJ is to catch him in the act," Billy said mysteriously.

"Why would we want to catch him in the act of making pizzas?" Bridge asked, obviously confused.

"We're not catching him in the act of making pizzas," Billy said, glancing in the direction of the kitchen door.

Jen and Bridge looked in the direction of the kitchen door, which had a large glass pane with the restaurant logo in it, and they could see the chef craning his neck to get a look at their booth.

The door swung open and a man who somehow looked younger and older than Billy at the same time walked out resolutely. He had big blue eyes and stubble. His chef jacket was impeccable and he was also wearing an orange apron and zebra-print pants.

He approached their table with a wide smile on his face. "Billy!" he called happily. "Good to see you made it to Corinth!"

"Have a seat, Robert," Billy said coldly without as much as a glance at the other man.

"I'd love to but I have a pizza to make," the other man said, punctuating almost every single word he said with a gesture with his hands. "I'm actually the only one who knows how to make a Mount Kilimanjaro."

"We're not here for the pizza, Robert."

The man looked at Jen and Bridge and his smile faded a little, a hint of worry appearing in his eyes for a split second. He blinked and it was gone. He smiled widely again and gestured towards the officers. "Who are your friends?" he asked, his eyes lingering on Jen a little too long. She looked away, noticing she had been staring.

"Jen and Bridge," Billy replied, pointing at each of them. "Take a seat, Robert."

"Welcome to Jungle Karma Pizza," the chef said, offering his hand to Bridge who shook it. He offered his hand to Jen, his eyes fixed on hers. "The name's RJ," Jen shook his hand quickly. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Sit down, Robert!" Billy snapped, having obviously lost his patience with the chef.

"Alright, alright," RJ said in a calming voice. He dragged a chair from a nearby table and put it by the table. "Are you sure you don't want to eat? I mean, you're already here and all."

Bridge and Jen shared a look and nodded. Billy rolled his eyes and sighed. "Fine. What do you want?"

"I like pepperoni," Jen said in almost a whisper.

"Me too." Bridge said, now looking at RJ fixedly.

"Awesome!" RJ declared, turning to walk towards the counter, were Lauren was leaning, watching them with interest.

Bridge took off a glove, raised his hand and swept it in front of him, to read RJ's aura. He frowned, as if he was unhappy with the readings but didn't say anything because RJ was already on his way back from the counter. Having been instructed by RJ, Lauren had disappeared behind the kitchen door.

The chef got to the table and sat down on a chair he had dragged over to their booth, his hands on his knees and his eyes on Billy. "I'm all yours," he declared.

"Why don't you start?" Billy told Jen.

Caught off guard, since her mind had been wandering without her noticing, Jen gave a little startled jump when Bridge nudged her with his shoulder. "Sorry, what?"

"Why don't you tell Robert who you are and why you're here?" Billy repeated.

Jen took a deep breath and looked at RJ, who had only moved to take off his animal print bandana and reveal a mane of brown hair that stuck out at the ends. He looked at her and Jen had the brief impression that he looked like a wild animal, like a lion or a wolf. "Right, my name is Jennifer Scotts. I am a sergeant in the Time Force. I come from the future." She stopped talking to give RJ time to react to the information but he didn't seem fazed. "Bridge Carson is a cadet in Space Patrol Delta. He is also from the future. B-but not the same future."

Jen kicked herself mentally. Why was she stammering? He was a chef at a pizza restaurant and only Billy knew what possible reason he could have to make her tell him who they were and why they were there.

RJ nodded encouragingly and she continued telling him about her mission and why she had gotten Bridge, and how they had found Doctor K's lab and then Billy.

"And your first reaction to seeing this destroyed lab was coming here?" RJ asked Billy.

Finally, Billy looked at him. "Trust me. I ran through a wide range of other possibilities in my head before deciding to come here." He looked away again. "But you are my best option in this case. I need someone who can do delicate circuitry work and who also knows about programing."

Bridge raised his hand. "I know how to handle delicate circuitry and programing," he said. He looked hurt. "Why didn't you ask?"

RJ pointed at Bridge and got up. "Looks like your problem is fixed and you don't need me after all. Your pizza will be here soon," he declared and put the chair back where he got it from.

"Robert," Billy called after him. The chef turned around and looked at him. "Let's not act like we are not thinking the same thing."

RJ swallowed hard and pointed at Bridge. "Bridge can help you with the lab. I have a pizza place to run."

And with that, he walked back to the kitchen without as much as a glance back.

Billy turned to Bridge. "We needed him," he chided.

"I can help you with the lab," Bridge insisted.

"We still needed him."

"Why?" Jen asked. "What's so special about a pizza chef that required we told him everything about us?"

"He's a Power Ranger too," Billy sounded impatient. "And he's a genius. He just likes to pretend he's not. He claims it makes his life easier."

"Well, we don't have him," Jen said. "So we'll have to make do with what we do have."

Lauren was back with a large pepperoni pizza that looked absolutely delicious.

"Dig in," Billy said when Lauren went back to the counter for their drinks. "It's better while it's still hot."

They ate the pizza voraciously, since it was indeed as delicious as it looked.

From the kitchen, RJ was looking out at them, waiting for them to finish.

"Everything okay, RJ?" Lauren asked.

He looked at her and smiled. "Everything is fine," he lied. There was a chance, and not necessarily a small one, that the Venjix Virus was back but he saw no need to worry her.

He looked at Billy and felt an emptiness in his heart. They had once, shortly before Venjix had attacked, been very good friends, but their friendship apparently hadn't survived Venjix. It wasn't just the loss of his friendship with Billy that caused the sensation of emptiness in his heart though. It was something else - something Billy reminded him of. His right hand moved to his neck and grabbed one of the many necklaces hanging from it. He noticed what he was doing and let go, putting his hand in the pocket of his apron.

"They've finished eating," he told Lauren. "Go get their plates and tell them their meal is on the house."

Lauren nodded obediently and did as she was told.

RJ walked distractedly to the fridge, opened it and started rearranging the items inside without any particular intention.

"You alright, boss?" a voice asked from behind him.

RJ smiled sadly but didn't turn around. "Yes, Chip, everything is fine. Just spirits from the past, catching up."

With those mysterious words, he closed the fridge and climbed the stairs that led to his living space. Once upstairs, he took off his chef jacket and sat on a stool by his kitchenette's bar. He looked at his home, so similar and yet so different to his home in Ocean Bluff, and felt himself overflooded with sudden emotions he hadn't felt in a long time. The sadness, the frustration, the anger - they all came crashing on him at once. But it was the overwhelming longing that brought tears to his blue eyes.

He had lost so much to Venjix.

He felt a pair of tears slide down his cheeks and put his hand in his pocket, pulling out a fern print bandanna, neatly folded. He ran his thumb over it.

"I can't," he told the piece of fabric, as naturally as if he was talking to an actual person. "I just can't go through that again."


	5. Whispers in the dark

Chapter 5 – Whispers in the dark

RJ sat on his chair - which was a new one because he had lost his beloved green chair back in Ocean Bluff - and looked around the city using his new monitors. Like his old ones, they used the city's own surveillance system to check for unusual activity.

He needed to be sure Corinth City was safe. He needed to be sure of that before he went to bed. Chip and Lauren, his employees in the Corinth version of JKP, were downstairs, cleaning the restaurant before calling it a night.

RJ hadn't expected Billy to come over with two people who were obviously Power Rangers, from the future, to top it off, and throw on his lap the possibility that Venjix was back. He hadn't really expected to see Billy again. It hadn't occurred to him that Billy knew he was still alive and living in Corinth, let alone that he knew where his restaurant was. It saddened him to think Billy had known all this time where to find him and had chosen not to do it before it was strictly necessary.

"RJ, we're done down here!" Chip called from the kitchen. Neither he nor Lauren had ever climbed the stairs to RJ's apartment, both very respectful of his privacy.

"I'll be right there!" RJ called back, getting up and turning the monitors off.

He made his way downstairs and found Chip and Lauren ready to go home, in their green shirts and zebra pants. They had put on their coats - Lauren's a shade of red and Chip's a weird shade of mustard that might have been yellow at some point. He looked at them for a few seconds like it was the first time he saw them, because it was the first time he noticed Lauren always wore something red, be it a scrunchie or her coat, and Chip had a strange preference for yellow that went as far as him instinctively reaching for the yellow colored soda on the fridge when it came to picking a drink for himself. Red and yellow, always. He glanced around the kitchen, suddenly aware of how much purple there was in it, and how horribly all that purple clashed with the bare brick walls.

He smiled a little at his employees, his belief in destiny suddenly restored. There was no way he wasn't destined to have this day. He put his hand in his pocket and found the bandanna he kept folded in it, always there. His smiled turned sad and he took a deep breath.

"Good work cleaning up, guys," he said, using one of his hands to gesture towards the kitchen. "You did a great job."

"Well, I better go," Lauren said awkwardly and waved at them. She attempted to smile but the expression fell flat. She walked out as both men said their good nights.

"Hmm, RJ?" Chip began, once they were alone. RJ raised an eyebrow to let him know he was listening. "What happened earlier? Who were those people?"

RJ did what he did best when he found himself cornered: he changed the subject. "You seem to have a strange predilection for yellow. You like it so much you even bought that coat."

Chip blushed, looking down at his coat. "I like yellow a lot. It's a nice color."

"It clashes with your hair."

"You love purple, and nobody has a problem with that."

"Because it brings out my eyes," RJ said with a smile and a gesture to his big blue eyes.

"And those people were?" Chip asked again, not letting his boss fool him.

"Just... a ghost from before Venjix, and two friends." He remembered feeling something strange when he had shaken Bridge's hand, like the darkest part of his soul was exposed to the other young man for a couple of seconds. And then there had been Jen - Jen and her round brown eyes and melodic voice. Shaking her hand had been interesting too, but for completely different reasons. He had felt a discharge electricity he hadn't felt in a long time when her hand had touched his. Chip's voice brought him back.

"What did he want?"

RJ blinked, startled, and smiled at Chip. "To say hello, I guess."

"Lauren said he didn't look happy."

"He wasn't. It must have been a bad day for him."

"What bothered you so much?" Chip's voice was energetic, his questioning impulsive, like he didn't know he was pushing too hard. It reminded RJ of Fran.

"Seeing Billy reminded me of Ocean Bluff," he lied. "I wasn't counting on being reminded of Ocean Bluff today."

Just like Fran, Chip looked at him with suspicion and then nodded. "Right," he moved towards the door, apparently concluding there was no way to get answers out of his boss. Suddenly, he stopped and turned to him again. "RJ, you know we trust you, right?" RJ nodded. "It works both ways, if you need us, you can trust us too."

RJ smirked and nodded. "I'll keep it in mind."

Chip opened the door only to be pushed back inside by a flash of red before they heard the door slam shut and the lights turned off.

"Good, you're both still here!" They heard Lauren whisper in the dark.

"Lauren, what's wrong?" RJ asked, moving in the dark easily as if the sun was shining. Using the Swoop Technique to hone in on her voice, he located Lauren and approached her. When he put his hand on her shoulder, he noticed she was shaking slightly. "Lauren?"

"Grinders," she choked out, her voice broken by the kind of visceral fear Venjix still instilled in all of the inhabitants of Corinth City.

"What do you mean grinders?" Chip asked. He tried to move closer to them but a loud thud and a pained cry let the other know he had found the cooking table instead.

"You saw grinders?" RJ asked, desperate to turn the lights on so he could have a proper look at Lauren but knowing that having the lights off was their best bet if there were grinders outside. "Are you sure?"

"I am completely sure. There was like a dozen of them, heading north. I don't think they saw me." She was still shaking. RJ wrapped a comforting arm over her shoulders.

"Couldn't it have been people dressed up as grinders? Some kind of sick joke?" Chip asked from the other side of the kitchen, where he was standing not wanting to risk hitting anything else by attempting to move closer.

"No. I know a grinder when I see one. I know what they sound like. I will never forget what a grinder sounds like."

"Well, if they were heading north and they didn't see you, we can turn on the lights," RJ said in a soft, calming voice.

"What if they turn around and come this way?" Lauren asked, grasping in the dark for him. RJ found her hand and squeezed it softly.

"They would have been here by now. It's alright, Lauren, you're safe," he turned the lights on and saw the girl's pale face, her eyes wide in terror, tears running down her cheeks. "Lauren," RJ called her but she seemed on the verge of a panic attack. "Lauren," he shook her softly and she looked at him but then shook her head.

Chip made his way to them from the other side of the kitchen and put a hand on Lauren's shoulder. "Lauren," he called her. She looked over at him and then jumped into his arms, hugging him tightly.

Not knowing what else to do, RJ found himself hugging them both. "You are safe now," he told them. "You both will always be safe with me." He meant that. He would never lose someone else to Venjix.

"How are we going to get home?" Lauren asked.

"You aren't," RJ said, letting go off them. "Stay here tonight. I have plenty of room upstairs." He smiled and made his way to the staircase. The other two stood at the foot of the stairs, hesitant. "It's alright. You can come up."

A soft 'wow' escaped both employees when they entered RJ's new loft.

"You should have seen the Ocean Bluff one," RJ said. " _That_ was impressive."

"You train in the martial arts here?" Lauren asked, looking at the training area in the new loft, which was pretty much exactly like the old one.

"Yes, kung fu," RJ said dismissively. "I hope you don't mind hammocks."

The other two watched him rummage through a large trunk, pulling out two hammocks, a red one and a yellow one.

He walked towards the back of the loft and called over his shoulder. "Can you give me a hand hanging these?"

The other two removed their coats and helped him hang both hammocks safely. RJ went back to his trunk and pulled out two blankets, again, one was red and the other one yellow. He put each blanket in the color corresponding hammock and smiled at them.

"It's not a five-star hotel but it's not permanent either," he told them. He watched them as Chip went for the yellow hammock, originally meant for Lily, and Lauren for the red one, meant for Casey. They removed their shoes and climbed carefully into their hanging sleeping arrangements. RJ smiled as they threw the blankets over themselves and went to his own room to get his pillows. He gave one to each of them. It wasn't like he was planning to sleep at any point that night. "Have a good rest," he wished them but he had the feeling his employees weren't going to get any sleep either.

RJ went into his bedroom and sat on his bed, closing his eyes to stabilize his breath and find his center. He needed to find his focus, to calm down. He was the boss, the eldest, the master, the wise one and the one Chip and Lauren were relying on. Being responsible and in charge was a position he had been put in a long time ago and he was used to it by now. He felt guilty for dismissing Billy earlier that night. He had acted against his very nature. He had been a coward. He looked at his hands and only when he saw them twitching did he became aware that he was trembling.

He had never been so scared in his life. And he had been in a lot of scary situations in his life. There was only one thing to do if Venjix was back and that was fighting against it. The fighting wasn't what scared him. Venjix didn't scare him. His robots didn't scare him.

It was that hole he felt in his heart - the one Billy had made him feel again - that scared him. What scared him was the very idea of filling that hole again.

He closed his eyes again and tried to visualize his wolf spirit inside of him. But there was nothing there. His animal spirit was gone.

And RJ wasn't sure he could show the courage of the wolf without it.


	6. The morning after the night before

Chapter 6 – The morning after the night before.

The morning came and all three of Jungle Karma Pizza employees sat in front of the TV watching the news for any reports on the grinders Lauren had said she had seen. There was nothing about it. There was a story about how the weather program would be changing to winter in the upcoming days, so everyone should expect dark, gloomy weather and colder temperatures, but nothing about sightings of grinders.

"I'm not crazy," Lauren said over the bowl of cereal she was eating. "I saw them."

"Nobody is saying you didn't, Lauren," Chip told her, his hand on her shoulder.

RJ got up from his chair and went to the kitchenette to put his own empty bowl in the sink. "Alright, guys, will you be fine preparing the restaurant for opening? I need to go out for a while."

"Sure," Chip said, getting up from the floor, where he and Lauren had sat to watch the news. He offered his hand to Lauren, who handed him her empty bowl and got up without his help. "We'll have everything ready."

"Be careful," Lauren asked.

RJ nodded and grabbed a purple sweater from the rack. He put it on, thinking about Chip and Lauren and if there was something there he hadn't seen before. He thought about walking but recognized that as a pathetic attempt to stall and decided to take the delivery jeep, another replica of something that had existed at the old Jungle Karma Pizza.

He drove in silence, taking deep, controlled breaths. He found the building he was looking for and parked across the street. He looked at himself on the rearview mirror and sighed. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," he told himself. "Focus on the now."

He got out of the jeep and walked towards the door, ringing the intercom. A female voice answered. "Yes?"

The voice made RJ smile before he could help himself and he found his hand running through his hair, trying to comb it into a less extravagant mane. "Jen, right?" he asked, acting as if he didn't remember her name. "It's RJ."

"RJ? Oh, the guy from the pizza place?" was her answer and RJ felt a very tiny sting in his heart that she didn't remember him.

"Yes, I'm here to talk to Billy. Is he here?"

The answer was the door buzzing. "Come on in," she said.

He walked in and was mildly impressed by the large space - it was, without a doubt, an empty garage - and made his way to the living area, where Bridge was sitting, his hand on his belly.

"Good morning," RJ said.

"You came," Bridge said, like he was disappointed by the fact.

"Just to talk to Billy," RJ told him.

"This way," Billy called from the reinforced door that separated the rest of the garage from Doctor K's lab.

RJ walked into the lab and his heart skipped a bit. He had seen destruction like this before, but not caused by Venjix.

"As you can see, I have a big problem in my hands," Billy told him, his voice still cold. "Bridge is great help, but it would be faster with six hands."

"I think Bridge could use some breakfast," RJ commented.

"Yeah, we all could, but we need this disaster fixed."

RJ walked around the lab and saw a white violin, smashed into pieces. He wondered if Doctor K used to play it to relax, the way he played the guitar when he had a lot on his mind. "I came to offer my help," he told Billy. "You need my help and last night I acted like a coward. I should have come with you right away."

Billy glanced at him. His eyes then darted to the door and RJ turned to find Bridge and Jen standing there. He noticed she wasn't wearing her uniform anymore, but a pair of sweatpants and a pink top with a white hoodie over it. His eyes lingered on her, and she crossed her arms, turning slightly away from him self-consciously.

RJ returned his attention to Billy and the lab. "Why do you think Venjix could have done this?"

"Doctor K wrote to me a couple of days ago telling me she feared that Venjix may have infected her ranger program."

"The ranger program? Do you think he could have used the program to do this? Use the armors or something?"

"No, not using the ranger program. But he must have found a way. Look around. This kind of destruction is textbook Venjix."

RJ swallowed hard and looked around. Venjix had managed not only to survive but he had destroyed this lab and probably kidnapped a young scientist. He felt anger start boiling inside of him but he kept it at bay while he walked around the lab trying to evaluate the damage without imagining what may have happened to Doctor K.

From the lab's door, Bridge watched RJ as he walked around the lab and shared a whispered comment with Billy every now and then. Being as discreet as he could, Bridge raised his hand to read the man's aura, to compare with the readings he had gotten the night before.

Next to him, Jen noticed what he was doing. "Is there something wrong?"

Bridge hesitated. "Yesterday when we shook hands, I could have sworn I heard growling," he said, his eyes still fixed on RJ. "Like a dog's growling but louder. It sounded really angry."

"Growling? Is that normal?"

"No, it had never happened to me before. So I read his aura when he went to give our order to Lauren, and there was something wrong with it." RJ looked at them as if he had heard what they were saying and Bridge flinched. He turned on his heel and walked away from the lab, Jen following him.

"What's wrong with his aura?"

"It is mostly alright. His demeanor is mostly honest. He's nice and his aura has a nice purple glow to it, but it is brighter shades of purple in some parts and less bright in other parts. It's like he's containing himself but that's not what bothers me," his eyes were big and round, the green of his shirt bringing out the green of his eyes. "There was a black area in his aura, right over here," he put his hand on the right side of his chest, "which is not where his heart is, unless he's one of those people who have their internal organs in the opposite side of their bodies but that is an extremely rare condition and-"

"Bridge!"

"Sorry. He doesn't really have a black spot in his aura, Jen, he has a hole in it. There is a hole in his aura."

"Have you ever seen anything like that before?"

"Never. It is very strange." He lowered his gaze, twisting his hands insecurely. "I don't think we should trust him."

"Well, Billy trusts him and he seems perfectly nice, and you said yourself that he's alright."

"No, that was last night. Right now, it's different. All his aura is contracted in on itself and a very dark shade of purple. I don't think we should trust him," he repeated.

"Why not?" Jen insisted.

"Do you remember what I told you about hiding an emotion so well you fooled yourself into believing you weren't feeling it?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't think we should trust a guy who can hide such hatred and anger so well he can fool himself."

Away from the lab, from the whole of Corinth City, a pair of green eyes blinked rapidly three times. They were followed by a groan. The girl sat up, looking around her, surprised to find herself where she was. Fear struck her heart and she turned on her heel, trying to find a way out of this all too familiar place. But there was no door.

"How did I get here?" she asked, despite the fact that she was completely alone. She saw projection on the wall in front of her. It looked like it belonged to a first-person shooter video game. She could see a different building and a pair of hands. She recognized the hands. She had spent hours looking at them as they typed furiously on keyboards. They were hers. "What's going on here?" She saw one of the hands bring a spoon upwards, as if the person through whose eyes she was seeing was eating.

"Welcome back, Doctor," said a voice behind her.

She turned around slowly. She recognized the voice, but it made no sense, not in this context. Not in that tone. "Ziggy?"

"You were always very smart," Ziggy said, leaning against the wall. "You have been very helpful to me, always helpful, even when you thought you were fighting me."

"You are not Ziggy."

"So smart!" the green ranger yelled happily and clapped his hands together. "Didn't I tell you? So smart. So intelligent. So knowledgeable! You truly are an admirable human being, Doctor."

"How did I get here?" she asked, looking around.

"This is where you always are," he said. "This is were you run to at night when you fall asleep. This is where you feel safe. This is home to you, Doctor."

"I broke free. I broke free from here."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Your body is free from this place but your mind, oh, Doctor, your mind will always remain here, trapped forever in Alphabet Soup."

K felt her knees go weak as she looked around, the space around her an exact replica of the cell she had lived in for so many years when she was being held captive by Alphabet Soup, piano and violin included.

"I think it's appropriate," the fake Ziggy continued, "that this is were we'll stay now that we are going to work together, Doctor. Because your days of fighting me are over." He walked towards her and she took a step away from him but then he disappeared and suddenly was right behind her, his hands on her shoulders, his mouth close to her ear. "We can do this the easy, painless way," he began, turning her so she was forced to look at the bizarre first person projection on the wall. "The way we have been doing it for the past few days. You came in without a fight, and you helped me restart the factory to create a few grinders to send to the city for supplies. In exchange, I made sure all your human biological needs, like sleeping and eating, were met. You didn't even notice." Trapped in his grasp, she shook her head, her breathing shallow and fast. "Or we can do this the hard, painful way, Doctor." He caressed her hair with one of Ziggy's hand and she shook him off.

"I will never help you!" she yelled.

"You are my creator, Doctor. I appreciate you more than I do the average meat sack," he told her. Her eyes were wide as she looked at him. She couldn't believe that Venjix was in Ziggy's body and she covered her mouth when a whimper came out of it.

"How did you do it?" she asked.

"I am Venjix, Doctor," were the words that came out of Ziggy's mouth. "I cannot be destroyed. You yourself made sure of that. I am mankind's worst nightmare and I will exist forever, thanks to you."

"I will never help you destroy mankind!"

"Oh, but I don't want to destroy mankind anymore," he shrugged off. "That is so last version."

"Then what do you want?"

"You," he told her, walking close to her again. "I came back for you. You and me will conquer this pathetic vestige of humankind and we will rule it, as one."

"NEVER!"

"Fine," Ziggy's voice said. "I thought this look might work better to persuade you." She shook her head, her face showing nothing but disgust. "Have it your way, Doctor," he pointed at the projection and she saw one of the hands grab a piece of metal, which looked like a large coin that had Venjix's emblem on it. "Still good as new, by the way. It shouldn't take too long to take effect," the hand held the piece of metal with the back side up, and she saw a long, thick needle shining under the light of the sun. She recognized what it was: it was an infection syringe. What Venjix had used to infect humans with the virus shortly before his last battle with the Power Rangers. "Last chance, Doctor, we can do this painlessly."

"I will never help you, Venjix."

"The hard way it is," he said and the hand in the projection jabbed the needle on a thigh, her thigh, and suddenly, the world exploded in nothing but pain. Everything was pain and everything hurt and Doctor K fell to the ground and started writhing in pain. Venjix approached her and turned her face up with his foot. "I will leave you there, on the ground in a world of pain, so you can think about what you have earned with this ridiculous resistance."

He disappeared and she just lay there, feeling more pain than she had ever felt in her entire life, trying to understand what was happening.

Outside of the prison of her mind, the body of Doctor K also lay on the floor of the old Venjix factory, writhing in pain and screaming, tears flowing freely from her eyes.

Inside her mind, she could see the ceiling of her Alphabet Soup cell and saw a number, big and red, appear in it: 1%.

The realization hit her like a brick to the face. Venjix was back with a plan and he had infected her.

And as far as she knew, she had no way of calling for help.


	7. Grouchy Wolves, hidden rangers

**Chapter 7: Grouchy wolves, hidden Rangers.**

Billy was listening to RJ's tale and furrowed his brow. "She claims she saw a patrol of grinders?"

"She saw them."

"Did you see them too?"

"No."

"Then how do you know-"

RJ made a dismissive gesture with his hands. "If she says she saw them, she saw them, Billy. Besides, I didn't need to see the grinders because I saw her. That kind of panic can't be faked."

"Everything can be faked," Billy said, putting his hands in his pant pockets and shrugging. "Everything is fake in this city, even the weather."

"Not everything is fake, Billy. People are real."

"Some people are real, RJ, others are half-cyborg, courtesy of Venjix."

"They're still half real."

"Is half real enough for you?"

RJ shrugged. "I can't write them all off because they fell victim to Venjix, Billy. Humans are an endangered species now. I always cared for other endangered species, it would be very hypocritical of me to not care about my own species being in danger of extinction."

"So you just trust all humans at face value now?" Billy's face showed his disapproval of this life style.

"Not now, Billy, always. I have always trusted people at face value."

"How many times do you have to get screwed over before you learn the lesson that not all people are trustworthy?"

"Many more times than I have been screwed over," RJ said, his face perfectly serious. "I have not yet developed your kind of cynical, detached nature."

Billy rolled his eyes. "Anyway, she saw a patrol of grinders, then what?"

"She ran back to the restaurant, locked the door behind her and turned the lights off."

"I don't need the blow-by-blow, RJ, did you or your other employee see the grinders?"

"We did not. They didn't come chasing after her into the restaurant," RJ's expression suddenly hardened after he said that. "This time." He added in a guttural voice that Billy had never heard him use before.

"Well, if there are grinders and no mass panic that means there's either very few of them or that they are being very discrete with whatever they are doing, or both." RJ nodded mechanically and Billy had the feeling the wolf master wasn't listening to him. "I had the feeling this may come to happen," he started and noticed RJ's eyes darted to his face, attention now focused on him. "Which is why I went looking for you." RJ pursed his lips and took a deep breath through his nose, Billy continues "I'm both incapable and unwilling to fight Venjix and his army hand-on-hand, but, unless my information is incorrect and it very rarely is, you are both capable and willing."

RJ let out the air he was holding in and looked at a point in the distance, over Billy's shoulder. "Capable, yes, very much so, if I say so myself," He smirked in a humorless expression. "Willing, not so much, not anymore."

"I was under the impression that was your specialty."

"I don't use my skills in the battlefield anymore, Billy," RJ's voice was barely a whisper.

"Then what good are they?"

"They say that those who can't, teach."

"But you can."

"Not anymore."

"But-"

"I said no!" RJ spat angrily. Billy flinched but said nothing. RJ took another deep breath and looked at him with a guilty expression. "I'm sorry, Billy, it's just..." He swallowed hard. "It's a touchy subject."

"Well, with Jen and Bridge on board I guess we can, regrettably, forgo your skills."

RJ licked his lips quickly, in a gesture that betrayed his nerves. "Thanks for understanding."

Billy looked at him and put a hand on his arm. "Are you alright?"

"Never better," RJ blatantly lied with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You?"

"I'm good. Trying to stay in shape."

"But unwilling to fight."

"Unwilling and incapable," Billy reminded him.

"Right."

RJ looked distracted and Billy looked at him, trying to put his finger on what was different. The previous night, at the restaurant, he had been pretty much the same RJ he remembered but not anymore. He looked older, a lot older, and sad. He also looked angry but only for very short moments, as if his anger came and went by in waves. Right at that moment, he looked peaceful, though.

"Did you keep practicing?" RJ asked out of the blue.

It was Billy's turn to share a sad smile. "With one thing and the other, no. I didn't."

"When was the last time you let it out?" RJ's blue eyes were looking directly into his, but his expression was not disapproving.

"When was the last time we saw each other?"Billy looked away from RJ as he said this.

"Last night," RJ said, repressing a smile.

"Funny," Billy huffed, but he couldn't help but smile a little. "I meant before you vanished into thin air."

"I didn't vanish into thin air," RJ corrected him. "I was captured by Venjix."

"I think we both know why that is an unlikely scenario.""

RJ smirked but his eyes looked sad. "Well, unlikely is not impossible."

"Whatever," Billy shrugged and looked at the lab door. "I need my tools, I suppose you have some of your own that you'd like to have handy."

"Yes. I have my jeep outside, I can give you a ride-"

"I have my car too." Billy said tensely.

"Right. Well, I guess we'll meet back here."

Meanwhile, at the new Jungle Karma Pizza, Chip and Lauren were getting the restaurant ready to open. Chip was at the front, swiping the tables quickly, to shine the tiles on them and Lauren was behind the counter, arranging the plates. She kept looking out the windows and towards the kitchen. Chip noticed but figured she wanted to be left alone, since she hadn't said anything, but just as he was swiping the last table, he heard her sob.

He turned around when he heard a plate crash against the floor, to find Lauren looking down at the pieces through teary eyes.

"Hey," he said, walking towards her. "L, what's wrong?" She tried to answer but choked on her words. He walked around the counter and wrapped his arm over her shoulders. "Lauren..."

"I'm sorry," she whispered, still looking at the plate.

"Lauren, it's just a plate," Chip said, grabbing the broom and dustpan they kept handy and sweeping the remains of the plate. "I'm sure RJ won't mind."

"I hate grinders," she whispered with a broken voice, after he threw the broken plate away. "More than any other thing Venjix ever created, I hate grinders."

"I think everybody hates grinders," Chip said. "I hate them too."

"I will never forget the sound they make," a tear slid down her cheek as she said this. "It keeps me up at night."

This was the most Lauren had ever shared about her experience with Venjix. Chip assumed that just like everybody else, she had lost a lot to the computer virus, but she had never talked about it. Sometimes, she spaced out in the kitchen, which had lead to several burnt pizzas that RJ seemed to have no problem with -at least he had never deducted them from their pay or done anything other than throwing them away and making new ones without any comment, other than the occasional "it's nothing". Sometimes Chip heard Lauren sob while she was mopping the floor after closing, her eyes always looked sad, even when she managed to give the clients her brightest smile. Chip didn't feel like sharing what he himself had lost to Venjix, so he had never asked her anything. RJ had occasionally wrapped an affectionate arm over her shoulders and made a comment to get her out of the sad zone, but other than that, he had never asked her anything either, as far as Chip knew.

Come to think of it, Chip didn't really know anything about RJ either. Their boss showed a carefree and peaceful attitude in general, specially around clients, but more than once, Chip had walked into the kitchen to find RJ stirring the sauce or grating the cheese distractedly. He always told them to be kind to the dough, but Chip had noticed he seemed to be getting some sort of anger issue out on a ball of dough. He usually looked at the overworked dough and threw it away with a disgusted look when he found himself caught in the act.

Lauren still had tears in her eyes and Chip wanted to do something for her, so he opened the fridge and grabbed two drinks. He put a hand on Lauren's shoulder and showed her the drinks. "Come on, I'm sure RJ won't mind if we drink these." He offered her one of the drinks and smiled. She looked at the drink but didn't take it. "Let's take a seat," he invited, pointing at the bar.

She dried her cheeks with the back of her hand and took the drink Chip was offering, walking around the counter to sit on the stools by the bar.

Chip followed her and sat down next to her. "Wanna talk about it?" She shook her head softly, looking down. "Lauren, we've been working together for almost a year now and every day seems to be a bad day for you, but I've never seen you this bad. Is it because you saw those grinders last night?"

She didn't say anything for a while, choosing to take a sip of her drink first. "Grinders scare me, Chip. And I know I don't look like it but I don't scare easily." She looked at her drink and swallowed hard. "I shouldn't get like this, but I can't help it."

"Hey, everybody has something they're scared of," Chip said with a shrug.

"I lost someone very important for me to a bunch of grinders," she explained, looking at him.

"I lost someone too," he said. "And, I never said this, but I think RJ did too." She nodded in agreement. Chip raised his drink. "To those we lost."

"To those we lost," she repeated, letting her drink bump softly against Chip's.

They took a sip of their drinks and remained silent for a moment, each thinking about their own loss.

"I lost my best friend, Vida," Chip heard himself say. He felt strangely liberated, he had never told anyone that.

"I'm sorry," Lauren whispered, putting her hand on his forearm.

He smiled at her. "She went down fighting, like she always wanted," he smiled at the memory of his best friend. "Vida was a tough one. I met her on elementary school. These bullies were on my case because I was wearing a cape and pretending to be a superhero. She told them to mess with someone their own size and stood between them and me," he was happily retelling the story, as if thinking of his friend only brought him happiness. "She was about half their size, but she faced up to them and they left us alone. She wasn't afraid of anything," he declared with admiration.

"Anything?" Lauren asked. Chip's excitement when talking about Vida had cheered her up a little.

"Well, she was afraid of the forest." Chip admitted. "But everybody was afraid of the forest."

"I see," Lauren said and took another sip of her drink. She looked down at the counter and then threw a quick glance at Chip. Then back to the counter.

"You want to know how I lost her," Chip guessed after taking a sip of his drink. She nodded. "We were caught up by grinders trying to get from what was left of Briarwood to here," he looked at a point in the horizon and his voice changed to a much deeper tone. "We were surrounded, we fought, we used our magic. But it was no help. They separated us and all I remember is being on the floor, pinned down by grinders, unable to move, to think, to breathe, almost, and she kept fighting, so they shot her. They shot her right in front of me. They blasted all that life out of her. Magic couldn't save her. It couldn't have saved me, I can't use it anymore." He went quiet and looked sad, so Lauren put a hand on his shoulder.

"You use magic everyday," she said softly. "You make sad customers laugh, you make me feel loved here, like I've got a friend. That's a very special talent and a kind of magic."

Chip looked at her, realizing only then he had said out loud he and Vida had used their magic to try to save themselves from the grinders. Judging by her comment, Lauren seemed to think their 'magic' was a kind of close-bonded friendship thing. He smiled at her. "Do you like magic?" He asked.

"Yes," Lauren responded with a gleam in her eye, thinking of her symbol power and how she used to tell herself it was magic when she was little. "I love magic."

Chip took his name tag off and showed it to her. "Now, I'm going to make this name tag disappear!" He declared. He closed his hand around it, blew on his fist and then: "OW!" He yelled, opening his fist and shaking it, the needle of the name tag stuck in his palm.

"Oh, my god!" Lauren yelled, flustered, trying to grab his hand to help but he shook it harder and then, when Lauren grabbed it to check the wound, the name tag was gone and there was no blood. No prick. No anything. She looked at his hand and then at him. "Where did it go?"

"I don't know," he told her looking around. "You have it." He pointed at her chest.

"I don't..." she looked down and saw her name tag didn't say 'Lauren' anymore, it now said 'Chip'. "Where is my name tag?" She asked amused.

"I think," he put his hand in the pocket of his apron. "This is your name tag, my lady," He said, presenting it to her.

And then, at that moment, Lauren laughed. She laughed with genuine enjoyment and amusement. She laughed because she was impressed and found the trick brilliantly performed. "That was amazing!" she congratulated, clapping.

Chip vowed his head to her and raised his drink again. "To magic, which made you laugh at long last."

"To magic." She agreed, still smiling.

They heard a noise in the alley behind the restaurant and they both straightened, suddenly alert and serious. They left their drinks on the bar and moved quickly towards the kitchen, to the rack where they kept their backpacks.

Lauren put her hand in her bag and withdrew a golden and black object, about the size of a cellphone, which she unfolded carefully.

They heard the garbage bin clank and Chip pulled out a black object from his bag, which he unfolded into a bow, much to Lauren's amazement. He pulled an arrow from his bag and put it in the bow, ready to draw the string.

Lauren walked around the cooking table so Chip could only see her from the waist up. She looked down and Chip saw her move her arm and whisper something he couldn't hear. There was a flash of red light but just as he was about to ask her what she was doing, the door to the restaurant opened.

Carried by their nerves and the adrenaline running through their veins, Chip drew the bow and fired, before he even noticed what he was doing and Lauren struck with a sword she had gotten out of nowhere.

"Woah!" RJ yelled, his hands fast as lighting catching the arrow and stopping the slash of the sword Lauren had used. He held the blade down, the point of the sword towards the floor. His other hand grabbing tightly to the now still arrow, stopped a fraction of an inch from his face.

"RJ?" Both employees asked in unison.

"Okay," their boss started, letting go of the sword slowly. "Let's all take a deep, cleansing breath, I think we need it." He guided them through the inhalation and exhalation and then stepped forward to close the door. "Why did I just get attacked by a sword and an arrow?" He looked at his hand and then at both of them, grimacing. "Where did you two even _get_ a sword and an arrow?"

"I practice archery," Chip said with a proud smile. "I carry my bow and arrows everywhere."

"Commendable," RJ said, giving the arrow back to Chip. He turned to Lauren. "And where did you get the sword?"

Lauren looked at both of them with a guilty expression but kept her mouth tightly shut.

"Yeah, where did the sword come from?" Chip asked.

Lauren raised the device she had taken out of her bag, which she had unfolded into a kind of brush, and shrugged.

"You drew it?" RJ ventured.

"That's a way of saying it," she said.

"There was like a flash of red light..." Chip told RJ and they both looked at Lauren.

"I used my symbol power to bring forth my spin sword," she explained quickly.

"Your symbol power?" Chip asked.

"Your spin sword?" RJ asked at exactly the same time.

Lauren gave them a guilty smile and raised the sword for them see. "My spin sword. I trained all my life in the ways of the samurai," she started. "When my father went to his last battle, I was separated from my brother and taken to a secret monastery where I was trained in the use of the samurai sword and the symbol power, so I could fulfill my destiny by sealing the evil Master Xandred away in the Nightlock world before he could flood our world with the Sanzu river," she explained, her eyes going from one to the other.

"No way," Chip whispered, his eyes wide.

"Heavy," RJ commented, remembering his suspicion from the previous night. "I take it your... predilection for the color red comes from that," he pointed at the brush.

She nodded. "Yes. I inherited this from my father. It is an antique heirloom," she moved the brush quickly in front of her and said: "Symbol power, fire!" She flicked the hand holding the artifact and a small ball of fire burst from it and flickered away.

"You can do magic?" Chip asked, now genuinely in shock. "Real magic?"

RJ raised a hand. "A more important question: is that a morpher, Lauren?"

"Not anymore," she answered. "I can still do small things like summoning my sword or making little balls of fire but my symbol power is almost gone and I don't have enough left to morph again," she answered before she even realized what she was saying. "Wait, how did you know-"

"Let's say you're not the only one who was taken to a secret academy to be taught parlor tricks," RJ answered, his voice betraying an underlying bitterness. He extended his hand towards Lauren. "Can I see it?" She held both the morpher and the sword up. RJ pointed at the morpher. "I don't really like swords that much," he admitted, taking the morpher from Lauren.

"Why not?" She asked.

"Swords are super cool," Chip asked. "I mean, a bow and arrow are unbeatable but swords are super cool too."

RJ threw an amused glance in his direction and said: "I prefer to fight empty handed," he continued to examine the morpher carefully. "I find a weapon is more of a hindrance than an aid."

Lauren and Chip looked at each other RJ's shoulder and shrugged.

"This is a very interesting artifact," RJ commented. "I can't tell from plain sight but its connection to the morphing grid may be partially torn, which would explain why you can't morph anymore." He handed it back to her with a courteous vow. "I'd have to examine it in more detail but it's possible the connection can be restored."

Her eyes widened with excitement. "You can fix it?!"

He held his hands up to calm her down. "I didn't say that. I said I'd have to take a closer look at it and _maybe_ I could restore the connection. It depends on how it was connected to begin with."

Chip stepped forward, holding his hand up. "How do you know this? All of this?"

"I thought it was obvious by now," RJ answered, waving his hands around the kitchen, trying to show them all the purple objects in it.

"I always thought you liked purple a little too much," Lauren commented with a smile.

"It was always my favorite color," he said, a hand on his heart. "I find it represents change and transmutation, something I went through several times in my life."

"Okay, so, you're both Power Rangers, right?" Chip asked.

"It is quite obvious at this point that all three of us are, Chip," RJ answered.

"Yeah, well, count me out," Chip told him, moving to his backpack.

"I have found one never really stops being a Power Ranger, Chip," RJ said.

"I did," Chip said, pulling out another artifact from his backpack. "This is my magic staff. I used to be able to perform magic and morph into the yellow mystic ranger, but not anymore."

RJ took the artifact from his hand, observing it carefully, taking in all the details. "This is beautifully crafted," he touched the crystal at the top of the staff. "What is this?"

"It's a crystal," Chip said awkwardly.

"The creature."

"Oh," the other said, running his hand through his ginger hair. "It's a garuda. A man with wings for arms that unfold..."

"Wide enough to cover the sun, yes, I know what a garuda is," RJ said, completely unaware of how rude he had sounded. "This is not a morpher," he sentenced, looking at Chip.

"No. But it doubles as a crossbow."

"A magic staff and a crossbow in one artifact," RJ said. "What could possibly go wrong?"

Chip looked at Lauren, obviously annoyed at RJ, who was still examining the staff. "I was... very careful with it. Tried to only hit the demons and evil monsters."

RJ blinked and looked at him, realizing what he had sounded like."I'm sorry, that came out wrong," he said sincerely. "I meant what happened to it to make it stop working."

"Oh," Chip said, his face going from pale to a deep shade of red. "I stopped believing in magic so I could no longer use it."

"It works on belief?" RJ checked.

"Yes."

"Intense," RJ said, handing the staff back. "Well, since neither of you can morph, then I suggest you stay here and take care of the restaurant until I come back."

"Come back from where?" Chip asked.

RJ took a moment to prepare his words. He looked at Lauren and remembered her reaction to the grinders the previous night and thought that maybe he shouldn't mention Venjix. Besides, they were both still Power Rangers and even if they couldn't morph, there was a chance they'd want to join the battle.

"The people who came by yesterday and caught your attention so much, are all Power Rangers," RJ started.

Before he could say anything else, Chip chimed in: "And they came to recruit you for a perilous mission!"

"Not exactly," RJ said with a grimace. "It's a rather safe and boring mission, in fact."

"But it requires Power Rangers who can morph," Lauren said.

"Well, I know Billy can't morph and neither can I, for completely different reasons, so, no, it doesn't require Power Rangers who can morph. Billy just needs help fixing something."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Chip asked.

"Yes, take care of Jungle Karma Pizza until I come back," RJ told him with a smile and made his way to the stairs.

"Are you sure you don't want us to come with you?" Lauren asked.

"Yes, I'm sure," RJ told her. "I would feel better knowing that the restaurant is safe in your hands."

Lauren and Chip smiled at him and RJ smiled back, nodded and climbed the stairs to his loft.

He dropped the smile as soon as he was alone and his hand moved to his neck, where a single silver ring hung from a black cord. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to admit that the breathing exercise, however deep and controlled, was helping less each day. The imminent threat of a Venjix attack wrecking the very fragile internal peace he had managed to regain in the last two years.

He walked to his work table and started gathering his favorite, custom-made tools in a toolbox.

"It's only a few days," he whispered. "Only to reconstruct the lab."

He closed the toolbox and his eyes landed on the cabinet where he kept his morpher, hidden in a box at the back, underneath a lot of other things. His hand was drawn to the ring again and closed around it. He had to make a conscious effort not to pull. He took and released a deep breath, and with it, he let go of the ring.

"There is no need," he whispered, his eyes closed. "Unless we have to rescue her."


	8. Out for a run

Chapter 8: Out for a run.

Jen zipped up her jacket as she walked downstairs. She was putting her hair up in a pony tail when she spotted RJ sitting on the floor in the middle of the empty garage space, legs crossed and eyes closed.

She tried to walk past him as quietly as she could, trying not to disturb him, but she had only taken one more step when he said: "You're up early."

"You're one to talk."

"I like to meditate before the sun comes up." He opened his eyes and smiled peacefully at her. "Good morning."

"Good morning."

She looked at him and thought he looked very tired but he got up and stretched his arms over his head, letting out a long sigh.

"Where are you going?"

"Out for a run."

"Can I join you?" He asked through a yawn.

"Are you sure you're up for it? You look tired."

"I'm alright," he dismissed, waving his hand in front of him. "Let me get my jacket."

It was then that Jen noticed he had been meditating in sweatpants and a t-shirt, despite the fact the weather was rather cold. She also noticed the tattoo on his right forearm.

"That's an odd place for a tattoo," she commented as he put on a purple hoodie. "It must have hurt a lot to get it."

RJ looked at his forearm and said: "It hurt more than I thought it would."

He smiled at her and then pointed towards the door.

Outside, they stretched their legs and backs and started to jog at a steady pace. As they jogged in silence, Jen kept throwing glances at him. He was handsome but what she found fascinating was how mysterious he was. His eyes looked bright and carefree sometimes and then, out of nowhere, they would turn dark and sad, or very intense and angry. The rest of his face barely moved, but it was still easy to tell he was feeling a turmoil of emotions, all at the same time.

After a couple of minutes, his face relaxed and he had a small, pleased smile as he jogged next to her, his blue eyes sparkling again. She looked at him, trying to figure out how he could control the hatred and anger Bridge had said he had seen in him so well that he looked positively content with life.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, startling her. "Do I have something on my face?" He ran his hand over his beard, as if to brush off a possible stain.

"No," she whispered back, forcing her eyes forward. She could feel his eyes on her and looked at him. "What is it?"

"You were the one throwing glances at me," he said with a shrug. "Is there anything you want to know?"

Jen thought for a second that she wanted to know everything about him, but she shook off the feeling, wondering where it had even come from. She told herself he was just a chef and a former Power Ranger, nothing more.

Except he was obviously a lot more and she couldn't help but finding him fascinating.

"Billy," she said out loud, picking a subject she thought wouldn't be too personal. "What's the story there?"

He smirked. "Billy used to train with me in Ocean Bluff, the city where we lived before coming to Corinth."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you two train together? Are you friends?"

"I'm not sure if we are still friends," he said, looking down. "But we were friends when he trained with me."

"You keep saying 'he trained with me' instead of 'we trained together'."

"That's because he trained with me, but we didn't train together," he explained, using his hands to emphasize the difference he was trying to express. "I was Billy's master."

"His master?"

"As in his teacher," he cleared. "Billy came to my pizza parlor looking for a master."

"I'm not following," she admitted.

"Billy and I share a trait that makes me ideal to be his master. It also makes him ideal to be my student."

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she said, shrugging. Maybe the subject was too personal after all.

He sighed. "It's not that I don't want to tell you, it's just that I'm not sure how it will sit with you."

"Try me."

"Fine," he agreed, looking at her again. "But you have to promise to listen with an open mind."

"Open mind?" She looked at him and saw he was being serious. "It's the kind of story that requires an open mind?"

"It is, yes."

"Fine. I'll keep an open mind."

"Billy and I both have the same animal spirit," he began. "The wolf."

She closed her eyes for a second and let out a sigh. "Animal spirit? Really?"

"You said you'd keep an open mind," he reminded her, smirking.

"Sorry," she said smiling at him. "Continue."

"Well, the wolf animal spirit is rare and there are very few masters of the style," he frowned and corrected himself: "There were very few masters of the style, as far as I know, I'm the only one left."

"The style?"

"Right, I should have started at the beginning," he pointed at his right forearm, roughly where the tattoo she had seen earlier was. "The tattoo represents my master stripes, they were given to me when I became the wolf master," he explained.

"They gave you the tattoo? Was it like, forced upon you?"

"No, not at all," he held his hands up to halt her train of thought. "Well, it sort of was," he admitted, then shook his head slightly. "In the academy where I learnt kung fu, you get your master stripes when you become a master. They brand you forever as a master of your animal spirit, and they come with a series of rights and responsibilities. With the brand, your master status can't be denied or taken away and you can't forget to uphold the values you stand for."

"When did you get that tattoo?"

"A long time ago."

"Where you underage?"

He smiled at the concern her voice expressed. "No, I wasn't underage. And it's not like they held me down and tortured me, Jen. The tattoo is, let's say, magical."

"Your tattoo is magical?" She repeated.

"Like I said, it comes with some strings attached," his expressive eyes looked dark for a moment as he said that. "But what I mean is that it's not done with a needle, it appears magically when the level of master is achieved." She furrowed her brow, trying to understand what he was saying. She took a in a sharp breath and he held up a hand. "Open mind, remember?"

She sighed again. "Right," she said and then raised a hand. "But you said it hurt more than you thought it would."

"I did, yes," he answered, his expression puzzled. "But it wasn't the actual getting of the tattoo that hurt, it was having it that hurt."

"Do you always choose your words this carefully?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've heard talk like yours before. Always choosing the precise words to make others feel like you've answered their question when you really haven't said anything of real value."

"Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"Like I said, I've heard it before."

"From whom?"

She closed her eyes, mentally kicking herself for walking into that trap. "My superior officer."

"Who's choosing words carefully now?" he asked with an amused smirk.

She nodded, unable to keep the corners of her mouth from curling slightly up. "Fine, if you have to know, he was my fiancé."

"Is he your husband now?" He asked, avoiding eye contact.

"No," she admitted in a whisper.

"Ah!" he let out, rolling up his sleeves slightly. "And so the mystery of sergeant Scott's hard shell is solved."

"We were talking about you and Billy," she reminded him.

"Yes, we were."

"Well? How did he find you?"

"Billy has access to a database of all earthlings who have been Power Rangers, and my status as wolf master is in it."

"How do you know?"

"Because I put it there."

"Of course you did."

He smiled and nodded. "Point is Billy wanted to learn how to control his animal spirit and he came to my pizzeria in Ocean Bluff."

"Did he live in Ocean Bluff?"

"I really don't know," he admitted. "We never discussed how he ended up in Ocean Bluff, or finding me. But he did and I started to teach him how to control his spirit."

"Started to teach him? He didn't finish his training?"

"No. It really wasn't his fault, though. The wolf is a fickle creature, the spirit is very hard to control. It took me a long time to figure out how to control mine. When I last saw Billy, he hadn't figured out the way to control his spirit."

"Wasn't that what you were supposed to teach him?"

"How would I teach him how to control a part of himself?"

"You were his teacher."

"And I taught him," he defended. "I taught him the wolf technique, but as quick as he was learning the moves, control over his animal spirit is not something I could teach him, he had to figure that out on his own."

"Why couldn't you teach him?"

"Because the wolf technique doesn't cover that," he said, his eyes sad again. "There is nothing about that in any of the scrolls that describe the wolf technique."

"Didn't your master teach you how to control your spirit?"

"He couldn't teach me how to control the wolf," He looked ahead again. "Because he had a different spirit. None of my masters had the wolf spirit."

"Your masters? In plural?"

"Yes," he shook his head again. "Like I said, the wolf is a rare spirit and wolf master are even more rare. When I was in the academy, there was no wolf master available for me to learn from. I learnt from the scrolls, and masters with other spirits who knew the moves of the fighting style."

"So the fighting style and the control of the animal spirit are two separate things?"

"Exactomondo." he pointed at her with his pinky. "I could teach you the fighting technique of the wolf and you could learn it to perfection, but that wouldn't make you a wolf master."

"Why not? If I have learnt the technique to perfection, why wouldn't I be a master in it?"

"Because the word 'master' has two meanings."

She took a moment to figure out what he meant and he was happy to keep jogging in silence. "Master as in teacher and master as in the one who gives the orders," she said.

"Exactly."

"So you don't get the tattoo for being a teacher, you get it for being in control of your animal spirit."

"You are a very intelligent woman," he complimented with a smile.

"So you are in control of your wolf, but Billy isn't in control of his."

"You could say that, yes."

"What do you mean? You have the tattoo, that means you are in control of your animal spirit, that's what you said."

"I got the tattoo for gaining control over my animal spirit. It is possible to lose that control given the right circumstances."

"Did that happen to you?"

"Many times. Like I said, the wolf is a fickle creature and very hard to control."

"Are you in control now?"

"Yes," he answered but he didn't look at her as he said it and his face saddened again.

"You're lying," she accused him.

"I'm not lying," he defended.

"Well, you're not telling me the whole truth, then."

"That is one of my faults, I admit it. I like to keep some things to myself, if that's alright with you."

She stopped jogging and he stopped with her. They looked at each other in silence for a moment and Jen had to admit he wasn't going to give in on that part. "Fine," she started jogging again. "Why aren't you and Billy friends anymore?"

"We are alike enough to like each other but different enough to make our friendship difficult."

"You got on his nerves."

"What makes you think he didn't get on my nerves?"

"Because he is the one being mean," she answered. "Also, you don't strike me as the kind of man who loses his patience quickly."

"I have learnt to be patient with age," he said, his hand on his chest, in a gesture of fake modesty.

"And modest too."

"Indeed. I learnt to be humble the hard way."

"You are not humble in the slightest," she accused again, this time with a chuckle.

"I am humble," he declared. "Being proud of my achievements doesn't make me arrogant, Jen."

"If you say so."

"I do say so."

"Fine," she said and then grimaced. "Ouch!" she stopped jogging and bent down to grab her left calf, wincing in pain.

"Are you alright?" he asked worriedly.

"It's just a cramp," she dismissed, massaging her leg.

He knelt in front of her. "Let me help," he offered, moving to take her calf in his hands.

"NO!" She spat, making him flinch. "I'm fine, it's just a cramp."

"Please, I can massage it away."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sure that works with every single human being you've ever wanted to touch, but I'm fine."

He laughed. "Jen, I'm not... I'm not hitting on you," he told her. "If I were, you'd know." She looked at him and his eyes were sparkling with joy again and he was giving her a flirtatious smirk.

"I don't think _you'd_ know if you were hitting on me," she said, massaging her leg, trying to make the cramp go away.

"You are doing it wrong," he pointed out. "Please, let me do it."

"I said no."

"I'm a Kung Fu master, Jen," he reminded her. "I know several massage techniques, and while some of them are just for pleasure, most of them are therapeutic," she just rolled her eyes before wincing again. "Please, let me do it, I know how to get rid of a cramp very quickly."

She sighed. "Fine," she agreed, getting her hands out of the way and standing up from her bent down position.

He moved to roll up the leg of her sweatpants and she put a hand on his shoulder. "Can you do it through the fabric?"

"Of course," he said and grabbed the hem of the pant leg again. "If you want me to peel off your skin with the fabric," she clawed her hand, pinching his shoulder and he looked up at her. "I have seen women's legs before, you know?"

"I'm sure you've seen plenty," she snapped back. "It's just really cold," she said, aware of how lame the excuse sounded.

"It will only take a minute," he assured her.

"Just do it through the fabric," she insisted.

"It'll be fine," he said and rolled up the leg of her sweatpants. He looked up at her and noticed she was looking into the distance, swallowing hard. "I won't be long," he whispered, putting his hands on her calf muscle.

His hands, unlike the air around them, were very warm and surprisingly soft for a man who claimed to be a chef and a Kung Fu master. She looked down at him and he was massaging her calf in a rather medical fashion, no added feeling of sensuality or romanticism, his sight averted from her leg.

He put one hand behind her knee and bent her leg, using his other hand to stroke her muscle up and down, firmly but carefully. Her leg didn't hurt anymore but she didn't ask him to stop, she just waited for him to finish.

He ran an inspecting hand down her muscle one last time and rolled the pants leg down again. "There you go, better?"

She put her weight on her leg and nodded, giving him a shy smile. "Thank you."

He smiled at her and pointed in the direction they had been jogging from. "Perhaps we should walk back, just in case."

She wondered why he hadn't asked why she was so apprehensive about him touching her leg, but he didn't seem even curious.

"Yes, perhaps it's better to walk back."

He looked around them and then up at the dome. "The winter setting is certainly in place," he commented.

"Yes, it's definitely colder."

"And darker. The sun should be out by now."

"Well, it could be the clouds," she commented distracted by the memory of him massaging her leg.

"Jen, we're inside a dome," he reminded her. "Both the sun and the clouds are fake."

"Right," she shook her head slightly. "Why imitate winter, though?"

"I think it's about normality," he said, tilting his head. "The intention of Corinth is to make people feel like nothing has changed, like Venjix never happened."

"But it did happen."

"I know, and pretending it didn't happen only makes it harder to deal with," his face was serious again.

"You're worried it might be back for real, aren't you?" She asked, putting her hand on his shoulder.

He looked at her. "Not really," he said.

"You're lying again."

"Not lying," he said, smirking. "Just not telling the whole truth."

"Out of habit?"

"Jen, Venjix is definitely back, I know it, I have come to terms with that," he told her in a serious tone. "But that's not what worries me. What worries me, if you don't mind, I'd like to keep to myself for now."


	9. Someone to help

Chapter 9: Someone to help me

The number was rising a lot slower than she had expected.

From what she had been able to see from the projection that showed her what her body was doing, the rate of infection was about 10% every two days.

Right now, the number shining on the ceiling said 16%.

She calculated that she would start losing control of her capacities and be more vulnerable to Venjix's will at around 33%, and would lose all power to resist Venjix's orders at around 51%.

At 100%, she calculated she would lose herself completely.

Right now, she sat on her little chair, looking at her black keyboard and focused on her main priority. Since Venjix had kept its word of fulfilling all her biological needs, her priority right now was to call for help, to let someone know where she was and what had happened.

The problem with that was that she had no idea of what had happened, where she was or how she had gotten there. The last thing she remembered was connecting the series red morpher to her old lab's mainframe to scan it, looking for...

Signs of a Venjix infection.

Well, she had found them, obviously.

She closed her eyes and let out a sigh, trying to focus on the data she had about Power Rangers living in Corinth.

She couldn't count on her own team. Dillon and Summer had left with Tenaya over a year ago,. Gem, Gemma and Scott were with a scouting party looking for more survivors in the wasteland. Flynn had left with his dad to the new domed city that was being built, to help with the set up. And Ziggy...

Ziggy had been with her at the garage when she checked the series red morpher. She was now a prisoner of Venjix and she had no way of knowing where Ziggy was. And even if she did, Ziggy's morpher was back at the garage, presumably, and infected by Venjix, like the rest of them.

She wondered if Venjix had gotten a hold of any of the morphers and made her head look around, trying to find the case where she used to keep them. She couldn't find her in the immediate surroundings of her body but that could mean a myriad of different possibilities.

Who else did she know who was a Power Ranger and she would know for sure could help her?

There was William Cranston, who had helped her during the fight against Venjix, being extremely useful when she got stuck looking for solutions. But he didn't have a morpher anymore, she was certain of that, and fighting Venjix without a morpher was a bad plan.

Who did she know who had a morpher and fighting skills? Someone she could contact for help?

In her frustration, she let out an angry huff and that brought back a memory from the time she and her ranger team were still engaged in the fight against Venjix. The others had gone out to the battlefield and she had been alone at the garage when the buzzer had gone off. She had looked at the feed from the camera to find a young man with a large pizza in his hands, the logo of a pizza place clearly visible on the box. They had started a brief argument, because he kept insisting the pizza had been ordered from the garage.

"I did not order that pizza!" She had been insisting through the microphone of the intercom, looking at the man who seemed completely unfazed by her frustration.

"This is the address I was given, miss. Are you sure nobody else here ordered it?" He had asked.

She had let out an angry huff, clearly audible and had repeated: "I did not order it and I have no way of knowing if anybody else in this garage did!"

"Ok, what's your name?" He had asked, holding the large pizza in one hand and gesturing towards the cam with the other.

"What does that matter?"

"Talking to a camera and a speaker makes me uncomfortable, I'd rather know you're a real person. What is your name?"

"K. Doctor K to you," she had spat.

"K?" He had repeated.

"Doctor K."

"Right, Doctor, I'm RJ. This pizza is really hot and it would be great if I could just deliver it and go back to my pizza parlor."

"Well, deliver it somewhere else, it's not mine!"

"Woah, woah, woah, take a deep breath, there," he had instructed, moving the pizza to his other hand.

She had looked at his wrist and had recognized what the device strapped to it was in less than a second. She had buzzed him in immediately.

He had walked in and she had met him pretty much at the door. "So, is it yours after all?" He had asked.

"No, I don't care about the pizza at all, just put it on the counter," she had dismissed. He had done so, looking hurt. She had moved to grab his wrist and he had moved his hand away in a swift motion.

"What do you think you're doing?" He had asked.

"I want to look at your-"

"Thank you!" Ziggy's voice brought her back to the present immediately. "Who was that man?"

She swallowed hard. How could she had been so stupid? She had let Venjix know about RJ, because the virus was in her mind too. "He was a pizza delivery guy."

"And why were you thinking about him?" The virus asked. It put its hands on his chest, looking hurt. "I thought you had feelings for the green ranger!"

She refused to give him any more information.

"Who was that man?" Venjix repeated, still using Ziggy's looks and voice to interact with her.

"A pizza guy."

"From which pizza parlor?"

"I don't know, I didn't order the pizza."

"From which pizza parlor?"

"I don't know, Venjix."

"RJ, the pizza guy," Venjix recounted. "What is so special about RJ, the pizza guy?"

She tensed but said nothing.

"He had something on his wrist, the pizza guy," Venjix said. "That was not a watch. He was a Power Rangers, wasn't he?" She said nothing but swallowed hard. "Which pizza place did he work at?"

"I don't know."

"TELL ME!" He had yelled with an anger that was so purely Venjix's that Ziggy's face couldn't hide it.

"Jungle Karma Pizza," she admitted, almost against her will. "The ranger series operators used to love his pizza."

"Well, well, well," Venjix started. "Jungle Karma Pizza, I remember paying it a visit in a little town by the coast, there wasn't much left when I was done with it. I didn't know it had made it to Corinth. I guess it's time my grinders pay it another visit."


	10. A dire wolf

Chapter 10: A dire wolf.

RJ and Billy were working together on a console that had a couple dozen cables connected to it. They were working in a silence RJ was starting to find oppressive and he wished Billy would say something, anything, to break it.

Billy glanced at his former friend and took a deep breath. "RJ," he called. "This is interfering."

RJ looked around for what it was that was interfering, only to notice that he didn't know what was being interfered with. "What do you mean?"

"This," Billy said, pointing at them both. "This silence, this tension. If we are going to work together, we need to work as a team, and this is not a team. It's not even an alliance."

"I can only say I'm sorry so many times, Billy."

"And you haven't meant it one single time " Billy accused, putting the screwdriver down and looking straight at RJ, who put down his tool as well and stood straight. "And that's fine. You had your reasons to do what you did, to disappear, to pretend you were dead..."

"I was captured by Venjix."

"That's your story and you're sticking to it, I get it," Billy dismissed and RJ huffed his frustration to Billy not believing him. "I need to know that I can still trust you."

RJ chuckled as if the idea was ridiculous. "Of course, you can trust me."

"Right," Billy said, rolling his eyes. "Except you lie and you tell half-truths so often, I think you don't even remember how to be honest."

"I know I wasn't the best friend ever..."

"That is not true. You are a great friend, albeit a rather peculiar one," the former blue ranger said. "You were also a great master and I regretted losing you on both accounts."

RJ smirked sheepishly. "Thanks."

"Anyway, I need to know that when push comes to shove, you will be honest."

"I always am," RJ insisted. Billy raised an eyebrow and the wolf master added: "When push comes to shove."

"I think this situation qualifies."

"It definitely does."

"There are three things I've always wanted to know about you, I would like to ask those three questions and I want you to be one-hundred-percent honest."

"This isn't about the Venjix time, is it?"

"No. I've wondered these things long before Venjix."

RJ smiled his pleasant, welcoming smile and nodded. "Alright then, fire away."

"First, what does the R stand for?" Billy asked point blank.

RJ snickered. "Robert. My first name is Robert."

Billy showed no reaction to that. "Two, are you older than you look?"

"That depends," RJ started. "How old do I look?"

"Late twenties."

"Then, yes."

RJ expected Billy to push for a more detailed answer, but the other man simply asked his last question: "Where are you from?"

The violet ranger was taken aback by the question but knew he shouldn't lie. So, he stalled. "What do you mean? You know where I come from."

"You weren't born in Ocean Bluff. Where were you born?"

"Oh," RJ swallowed hard but knew this was not a moment to lie. "Holland. I was born in Holland."

"You're Dutch?" Billy seemed genuinely surprised.

"That's what they call people who were born in Holland, yes."

"Dutch," Billy muttered and then shrugged. "Alright then, I'm going to assume you were honest on all three questions." He smiled at RJ. "Thank you for your honesty."

"I was honest on all three answers," RJ told him, smiling back.

"Yes," Billy said, picking up his screwdriver again. "It adds up."

"Adds up to what?" RJ asked, picking up his own custom tool.

"You," Billy said with a shrug.

While they were doing that, Bridge was on the other side of the lab, helping Jen set up the surveillance system. They were planning to use the city's own cameras but keeping it isolated from the lab and the time ship, in case Venjix had infected the city's systems.

"There are so many cameras," Bridge said, with a slight tone of despair.

"Yeah, but I guess they needed this many."

"Still, how are we going to keep up with a surveillance system this big? It would take a legion of people to monitor these!"

"We don't need a legion of people," Jen said, pressing a circle on her gauntlet to bring up the list of items she had available to her. "Because we have this," she tapped the hologram of the list and a small device materialized on the table, right under her hand.

"That thing is like magic," Bridge commented, his eyes fixed on the gauntlet.

"I know, I'm still trying to get used to it myself," she said. She took the device and showed it to him. "This device has an algorithm that will scan the cameras for us, so we don't have to waste time sitting here looking at the feeds."

She placed the device next to the console she had conjured from the ship a couple of days prior and the device turned on, a small circle of little blue lights blinking as it read the system.

"Now, we have programmed the Venjix attack robot models and configurations as far as we know," Jen told Bridge. "The device will look for them in rapid succession and alert us if something goes-" She was interrupted by the little device making a high-pitched noise, its little blue lights turning red, and the feed from a single camera taking up the whole screen.

"Looks like it found grinders," she said.

Billy and RJ looked up when she said that and RJ pointed at the screen, his face suddenly very pale. "That's a block away from Jungle Karma Pizza!"

The device, still making the high-pitched noise, changed the feed to another camera, closer to RJ's restaurant.

"They're going to Jungle Karma Pizza," RJ said and left the room, running out of the lab as fast as he could.

Jen ran after him, followed by Billy and Bridge.

They ran all the way to the restaurant, both Billy's car and RJ's jeep forgotten in the urgency of the moment, and arrived to find chaos unfolding.

Jen, Billy and Bridge arrived slightly after RJ, who had run a lot faster than them, to find that RJ's employees, Lauren and Chip, were holding the fort quite well, against at least two dozen Grinders.

The restaurant seemed to be free of customers and Chip was kicking his way through the Grinders with relative ease, trying to find a point of advantage to fire the bow he was holding. Lauren was slicing through Grinders with a large sword that she was handling expertly.

But surprising as this image was, the most shocking one was RJ.

The calm, easy-going chef who had spent the last couple of days with them at the garage had transformed into a completely different man.

Jen had had the impression that he looked like a wild animal the night she had first seen him, and now she knew why. He was behaving like a wild animal, completely out of control.

He wasn't fighting the Grinders trying to enter his restaurant, holding them back or even knocking them out. He was tearing them apart with his bare hands, viciously pulling off limb by limb, throwing them against the walls with some kind of superhuman strength that made the robots shatter when they hit.

He was yelling angrily, moving fast and hitting hard, until he finally tore apart the last of the Grinders. He looked around like a caged animal, breathing heavily, his hands and arms scratched and bleeding. His eyes were a dark shade of violet, not their usual bright blue, and he was visibly shaking with anger.

Lauren and Chip were paralyzed looking at him and so were the other three.

"Are there any more of them?" RJ asked in a voice so deep it sounded like a growl.

Nobody answered, as they were all in shock from his behavior.

"WELL?!" He yelled, in Chip and Lauren's direction.

"None inside," Chip choked out.

RJ ran his bleeding hands through his hair and looked around desperately. He kneeled and picked up from the floor the silver ring that usually hung around his neck from a leather cord. He wrapped the cord around his neck and as soon as the knot was tied his eyes turned back to blue.

Next to her, Jen felt Bridge shaking and turned to see the officer pale and covered in a light coat of cold sweat.

"Bridge, are you alright?" She asked softly.

Bridge shook his head, but said nothing, his eyes glued to RJ.

Meanwhile, RJ was addressing his employees in a not very friendly tone.

"What the hell did you two think you were doing?" He all but yelled.

"Saving your restaurant," Lauren snapped back.

"My restaurant? What does my restaurant matter? You should have been saving your lives! Why didn't you run?"

"Because you left the restaurant in our hands and we were doing as you asked!" Lauren answered, obviously getting mad at his lack of gratitude.

"I left you in charge of making pizzas and serving customers, not fighting grinders!"

"Well, we know how to fight grinders," she snapped back. "We were doing just fine!"

"What if we hadn't known about this? What if we hadn't shown up to help you?!"

"Who's 'we' exactly?" Lauren asked. "You were the only one tearing robots apart with his bare hands. Your friends didn't even have time to get anywhere near the restaurant before you had destroyed them all yourself!"

"What if I hadn't been here to help you?!"

"Like I said, we would have been fine!" Lauren yelled. Chip put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off. "We can fight too, you know?"

"Really?! The girl who had a panic attack after seeing a patrol of grinders is telling me she has it in her to go face first against them?"

"Yes! That was exactly what I was doing, in case you didn't notice, in your eagerness to be the one tearing robots apart!" She pointed out. "I am a samurai! I do not run, I fight until the end!"

"What you did two nights ago was the exact definition of running!" He spat, prompting Chip to try to position himself between the shouting RJ and Lauren. Jen and Billy also approached them, but Bridge stayed on the other side of the street, pale and paralyzed. "What made you so brave this time?" RJ asked, grabbing Lauren's sword by the blade and pulling it out of her hand. "This little piece of metal doesn't make any real difference, Lauren! It is an useless trinket!" He yelled, throwing the sword away.

"HOW DARE YOU?!" She yelled at the top of her lungs. "THAT SWORD WAS MY FATHER'S AND NOW IT IS MINE! MY WARRIOR SPIRIT RESIDES IN IT!"

"IT IS A SWORD! DON'T LIE TO YOURSELF, IT IS NOT YOU WARRIOR SPIRIT, IT'S JUST A HINDRANCE! JUST LIKE ALL OTHER SWORDS!"

"MY SAMURAI SWORD IS A PART OF ME!" She yelled, moving to pick her sword up. "I can show you exactly how good with it I am right now!"

"I'd love to see you try!" RJ growled.

"ENOUGH!" Jen yelled, startling everybody. RJ and Lauren stood there, looking at each other, but everybody else was looking at Jen. "I believe you owe Lauren an apology," she told RJ.

"I don't owe anything to anyone," he growled and walked, past Chip, inside the building.

"What is wrong with him?" Chip asked. "He's not like that, he's never like that!"

Jen shrugged at him, and Billy put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at him and he pointed towards Bridge with his chin.

Jen walked back to the green ranger and put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright?"

He looked at her. "There was a dire wolf," he whispered in terror.

"A dire wolf?"

"Around RJ, when he was fighting. It was like a wolf but it was very dark, almost black, and so fierce, so angry... it tainted RJ's purple aura with black. It made RJ evil or something."

"It wasn't a dire wolf, Bridge," she said. "I think you saw RJ's animal spirit. He said it's a wolf."

"If that creature is his animal spirit then he is more dangerous than I thought at first."

Billy had approached them too and said: "The wolf animal spirit is dangerous. It's difficult to control." He smiled softly at Bridge, putting his hand in the pocket of his jeans. "RJ is not evil, Bridge, and neither is his wolf. He's just angry, I guess."

"That wasn't anger," Bridge said, shaking his head. "I've seen anger, that was rage. That was someone going berserk."

"Maybe," Billy agreed. "I noticed there was something different with him but I couldn't place it. Now I know."

"What is it?" Jen asked.

"My wolf can't feel his wolf anymore. I can't feel his animal spirit at all, it's like he's empty of it."

"That wolf was there," Bridge insisted. "I saw it."

"I don't deny that," Billy agreed. "I felt it when he was fighting, very angry, hurt and hungry; very unlike RJ's calm, easy-going wolf that I used to know. But then it was completely gone again."

RJ was walking out of the building, locking the door behind him. He handed Lauren and Chip their bags and coats.

"Go home, both of you."

"No," Lauren said defiantly, dropping her bag and coat on the ground. "I want to help in the fight against Venjix."

"Me too!" Chip said, in a voice that tried to sound more confident than he really felt. RJ turned to look at him and he swallowed hard but stood his ground. "We are Power Rangers too."

"Power Rangers who can't morph!" RJ reminded them.

"You said you could fix my morpher!" Lauren said. "Do it! Fix it! Let me fight with you!"

"The stakes are much higher than we originally thought-"

"Which is why you need us now more than before!" She insisted. "Let us fight with you!"

"This isn't game! This isn't something to laugh about at the end of the day. Go home and-"

"Let the grown-ups take care of it?" She interrupted. "You are not the only one who lost people to Venjix, you know?"

"I do!" He answered, and it sounded like a bark. "I know you lost someone and I know Chip lost someone too. We all lost people to Venjix. That doesn't qualify you for-"

"But it does qualify you?!" She yelled.

"I have lost so many people in my life you can't even begin to imagine!" He yelled. "My life, you have no idea how my life has been. You have no idea of how much people I have lost. The pain, the heartbreak... you have no idea."

"We would if you ever talked to us," Chip commented, his eyes glued to the floor.

"Just go home. That's what I should have asked you to do from the start."

"You need us," Lauren insisted.

"I don't need you," he whispered and walked away from them, towards the other three.

When he reached them, Jen said: "You know? I went to war. I fought in a war for two years, against this alien race. Massive monsters, ridiculously advanced technology. And all I had was a team and an attack riffle, RJ."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"I didn't have my morpher when I went to war. That didn't make me any less of a soldier."

"They are not soldiers, Jen," he refuted. "They're kids."

"They are adult enough to know this is a war they want to fight," she told him. "Which is why I'm going to let them join us."

"You can't do that!"

"Yes, I can. This is my mission, I call the shots."

"You can't let them join us, what if they get hurt? What if they die?"

"Then we'll bury them."

She turned and began crossing the street to where Chip and Lauren were standing and RJ followed her. "This is a bad idea, you can't ask them to join us!"

"Why? Because you say so?"

"If it must be so, then yes!"

She stopped walking and looked at him, straight into his eyes. "You are not my boss, you are not my master and you are not my leader. You haven't given me a single reason to trust you since I met you, other than your weird New Age nonsense and your charming smirk. I am the leader of this mission and they will join us, whether you like it or not."

RJ stood there, stung by her words. "Not a single reason to trust me?"

"Not one. I'm tired of hearing half-truths and 'trust me, I have a plan's. Give me a reason to trust you, 'specially after what I just saw, and then I'll take your opinion into consideration. Until then, I call the shots and I say they can come with us."

Lauren and Chip picked their stuff up and walked towards Jen.

"This is a bad idea, Jen," he whispered.

"The only real danger I've seen we're all in is not Venjix, RJ," she put her index finger on his chest, accusatorily. "It's you. You and your secrets and your half-truths."

"They can't morph."

"Not until you fix their morphers. Billy and Bridge will take care of the lab. You will fix the morphers. Theirs and yours."

"There is nothing wrong with my morpher."

"Then fix whatever it is that is keeping you from morphing," she told him, leading Lauren and Chip towards Billy and Bridge. "And fix it fast. We don't know how long we have until Venjix is strong enough to strike again. We need to be prepared."


	11. A dying fire

Chapter 11 – A dying fire.

The following morning, Lauren was meditating at the back of the garage area. She was sitting in seiza, her hands on her thighs, her eyes closed.

She had her samurai sword next to her because it's presence made her feel safer.

The truth was that no matter what she had yelled at RJ the day before, she was actually very scared of Venjix and its army, and the prospect of finding herself front and center in the battle against the computer virus was not one she liked very much. She was terrified and she knew she may not be able to hide it that well the next time.

She heard footsteps on the staircase and opened her eyes, although she couldn't see the stairs from where she sat. She heard whoever it was do something that involved flatware and cutlery, she heard the clinks, and then saw RJ walk into the empty garage area. He had a mug in his hand and was drinking carefully from it. He turned on his heel and saw her. She sat straight and pursed her lips, trying not to look at him.

He finished his drink, just standing there, looking in her direction. She was uncomfortable with that but she tried her best not to show it, instead deciding to show how angry at him she still was. He probably had no idea of how disrespectful he had been by throwing away her sword and claiming it was "a hindrance".

He had gone to the kitchen and put the mug in the sink, she presumed from the sounds she heard, it sounded as if he had opened the cutlery drawer. To her surprise, he was walking back to her, a sauce spoon in his hand.

He stood in front of her and pointed at the floor with the spoon. "Do you mind if I sit here?"

She shrugged. "We all live here now."

"True, but do you mind if I sit here?" He insisted, pointing again at the floor right in front of her.

"If you want to sit exactly in that spot, it's your business."

He sat down in a lotus position and put the spoon in front of him, perfectly aligned with his body.

"What is that for?" She asked.

"I wasn't sure if you'd still be in a mood to show me how well you can use that sword."

"You brought a spoon to a sword fight?"

"I brought a spoon to a sword fight," he answered, nodding. "I was hoping it wouldn't be necessary."

She swallowed hard to keep from giggling. "I'm just meditating."

"Good, meditation is great," he commented, closing his eyes and straightening his back. "It's been hard for me since Venjix, though."

She agreed but she didn't want to admit it out loud.

They sat in silence, their eyes closed, each trying to calm their mind and both failing miserably.

RJ let out a defeated sigh and opened his eyes. Lauren face was contracted, as she tried to force her mind into a quiet state.

"Lauren," he whispered. She pretended not to hear him. "Give it up, Lauren, neither one of us can meditate anymore." She opened her eyes and looked down at her sword. RJ followed her gaze and nodded. "Lauren, about what I did yesterday, I'm really sorry. I had no right to release my anger on you or your sword."

"You said you don't like swords," she whispered, still looking at her sword. "Why?"

RJ sighed and smiled sadly. "I find weapons get in the way," he said.

"They only get in the way if you don't know how to use them," she told him. "If you know what you're doing, they become a part of your body and you don't even notice them."

"That's true."

"Did you ever learn how to use any weapons?"

"I am a kung fu master," he said, putting his hand on his chest and nodding towards her. "People tend to forget that. I learned how to use several weapons, including both, swords and sabers."

"Then what do you have against them?"

"I don't like them," he said with a shrug.

She looked at him fixedly and then shook her head. "That's not it. Well, maybe there's a part of that but that's not entirely it."

RJ smirked, his eyes sparkling with glee. "This is a strange situation."

"What is?"

"I spent over a year, almost two, sharing my home with four Pai Zhua students, three of which eventually became masters, and not one of them could call me out on my lies."

"So?"

"The people gathered in this garage seem very good at it."

"So, the swords?" Lauren insisted.

"Just like Chip, you are very good at not letting me distract you," he said, waving his hands around. She merely raised an eyebrow. "When I started training kung fu, my father was convinced I shared his animal spirit, the shark. That technique involves twin sabers and a lot of speed. He loved it, I despised it."

"Because of the sabers?"

"No, not the sabers," he admitted. "I thought it was dangerous."

"You tore robots to shreds with your bare hands, danger is relative."

"Also true. But what I truly didn't like was the speed."

"The speed?" She looked genuinely confused. "Speed is a great asset in battle."

"It is, if you know how to manage it. Sometimes, battles are won by taking your time to figure out your opponent, instead of blindly slashing as fast as you can."

"That's not what I-"

He raised a hand and nodded again. "Not you. The shark technique. I am a pacifist, Lauren, I would rather not fight at all, but I also believe that if a battle is worth fighting, it's worth fighting well."

"So you switched techniques?"

"Not for a long time. I learned the shark technique, among many others. But I didn't feel it suited me and that's because my animal spirit is not a shark, it's a wolf."

"Then why do you dislike swords?" RJ pursed his lips and remained silent. "I am a samurai, RJ, the sword is the center of the whole technique."

"I understand that, but I am not a samurai, I am a kung fu master," he inhaled deeply. "Having said that, I had no right to underestimate your ways, your technique or your sword, no matter how I was feeling at moment."

"I lost control too, RJ," she said. "I shouldn't have yelled back, it only made matters worse." She touched her sword gently and her eyes welled up. "This is not my sword," she admitted, looking up at him. "It's my brother Jayden's sword."

"You said it was your father's."

"Symbolically, it is," she cleared. "He left his morpher to me and his sword to Jayden."

"I suppose Jayden can't use his sword anymore?"

"No."

They fell silent, RJ giving her space, figuratively, and Lauren looking down at her sword.

"I'm afraid of what I might do with one if I had one in battle," RJ whispered after a few seconds.

She looked up at him. "Sorry?"

"A sword," he said. "I fear what I might do with it if I had one. That's why I don't like them."

"I see," she whispered. She looked at him, took a deep breath and opened her mouth. Then she closed it again.

"It's alright," he said with a smile. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

She smiled slightly and shrugged. "I can't use my sword anymore," she admitted, her gaze again on the sharp blade.

"What do you mean? You were slicing through Grinders like they were butter."

"Yes, but that was because the blade is very sharp, not because of my skills. I hadn't used Jayden's sword since I found it. I almost dropped it during the fight at least three times, it was like you said, it felt more like a hindrance than a part of me."

"And that feeling is new?" He asked softly, showing honest concern, his master's instincts kicking in.

"It is," she admitted. She let out a long, sad sigh. "I feel like I've lost the only friend I've ever had, the only friend who has been with me all along."

"I know that feeling."

"I'm afraid of Venjix, RJ," she admitted, looking into his eyes. "I'm very afraid of Venjix. But I'm even more afraid of having lost everything I was ever taught, everything I knew. I'm most afraid of having lost my warrior spirit."

He didn't answer immediately, despite the fact she was crying silently. He measured his words carefully. "We are all afraid of Venjix, Lauren. What I had to fight as a ranger, what you had to fight as a ranger, dangerous as it was, never really succeeded in doing any real damage to us. We didn't confront the consequences of that. But Venjix? Venjix hit us as close to home and as hard as it hit everybody else. We lost our homes, our loved ones... It hit us hard." She nodded. "Courage, real courage, isn't not fearing anything. Real courage is being afraid, sometimes so afraid that you feel petrified, like you will never be able to move again, and still doing it. Moving anyway. Fighting anyway."

"What if I don't have any courage anymore?" She asked in a barely audible whisper. "My own sword was snapped in half, what if my warrior spirit was snapped with it?"

"You warrior spirit is not in your sword, Lauren," RJ started. She looked at him but she didn't seem angry about that comment anymore. "I know that's what you were taught almost all your life but it is not true. I know you heard it so much that it seems unthinkable that it's not true, and is that belief, not fear, what is holding you back." He put his left hand on the right side of his chest. "This is where I thought my warrior spirit resided. But I was wrong," he moved his hand to the left side of his chest. "It resides here," he pointed at his head. "And here. My warrior spirit resides in me, in my whole being. It is not a thing that can be taken away from me because it is me." He pointed at her sword. "As long as your warrior spirit resides there and not here," he pointed at her chest, over her heart. "You will always be afraid and you will never be courageous. As long as your sword is more important than your soul, this is a battle you shouldn't fight, because it is a battle that you can't win."

She looked at the floor, crying in earnest. "I just don't know what to do..."

He moved to sit next to her and put an arm over her shoulders. "Yes, you do. Everybody always knows what to do. Sometimes we are just not willing to do it."

"Jayden and I were separated our whole lives," she started between sniffs. "And when Master Xandred was defeated, I moved in with him in our family mansion." He made no comments, while she dried her tears. "One day, about a year after Venjix started, the Grinders attacked our mansion. They were destroying the whole city, taking down as many people as they could. Jayden, his mentor Ji, and I took our swords and fought bravely against the Grinders, but there were too many of them and as great fighters as we were, Grinders don't feel pain and they don't get tired. And there were just so many of them, RJ, the noise was deafening..." He squeezed her softly against his side, to encourage her. "I don't know what happened to Ji, and honestly, I'd rather not know. Jayden and I were defeated and taken prisoner. Were you taken prisoner by Venjix?"

"Yes," he answered in a neural tone.

"Well, they took us to a factory, forced us to help in the making of more robots. The other people there were defeated, like completely defeated, their souls were broken, RJ. It was like they were dead people walking, it was so distressing."

"I know what you mean," he commented in the same neutral tone.

"But Jayden and I, we just couldn't give up, we refused to stop fighting," she swallowed hard. "We caused revolts, we destroyed Grinders constantly with anything we could find, we kicked them off other prisoners, we couldn't stop. Fighting was the last thread of hope we had. Have you ever been worn so thin you think you might break any second if you just stop fighting?"

"Yes."

"We found a way out and we planned our escape. We used two long pipes as substitutes for our swords. There was a hole in the fence and we ran for it one night. But the perimeter patrol saw us. We fought them off but we couldn't do both things. Either we ran for the fence or held the Grinders back. It was a choice I couldn't make, so Jayden made it for me. He told me to run. He said he'd finish them and run after me. I shook off the Grinders I had on me and ran for the fence, I escaped and just kept running until I was able to hide. I saw from the distance how the Grinders shot Jayden down. They carried his limp body and threw him into a pit. I stayed up all night, keeping watch over the pit, waiting for Jayden to come out," she sniffed and before she could stop herself, she was crying again. "But he never did!" She wailed. "The Grinders killed my brother, RJ, in front of my eyes, they killed him!" She buried her face on his chest and he hugged her tightly. "My brother gave his life for my freedom."

"That's what families do, Lauren," he whispered, stroking her hair. "Brothers, sisters, parents. We bend over backwards to make sure you are alright. We give our lives if we must to ensure your survival."

She barely registered what he said, strangely worded as it was. She simply sniffed, her face still against his chest. "Then I met you. I saw you run towards that factory. I thought you were mad."

"I was," he admitted. "I am also very sorry, Lauren, back then I wasn't measuring the consequences of my actions properly."

"What do you mean?" She asked, separating from his body to look at his face.

He smiled sadly and dried her tears with his thumb in a rather paternal way that confused her slightly. "That hole in the fence, Lauren, that was me." He dried her other cheek and caressed her hair with the same paternal demeanor. "I cut that hole in the fence so I could sneak in and destroy the factory."


	12. she blinded me with science

Chapter 12: She blinded me with science

Billy leaned against the reinforced door frame, barely able to keep his balance. "RJ," he called in a hoarse voice through a dry mouth. "Can I talk to you for a moment?"

RJ, who had been in the kitchenette chopping the vegetables for lunch, turned to look at him and dropped the knife down on the counter, drying his hands on a towel he had hanging from his pants waist he walked towards the blue ranger.

"Man, what's wrong?"

Billy didn't answer him, instead walking back into the lab. "Please, close the door behind you," he asked his friend as he stumbled towards Doctor K's chair.

RJ did as he was asked and walked towards him, looking worried. He put his hand on the blue ranger's shoulder and Billy looked at him, his eyes wide.

"Billy?"

"I don't think I have ever needed you as a master more than I do right now," Billy whispered. RJ kneeled on the floor in front of him, setting the towel aside and removing the bandanna he had put on for cooking. "I got this computer working, I think it's the main console," he started, pointing at a screen.

He had been working all morning on repairing what he believed was the mainframe of the whole lab and had finished a few minutes earlier. He had connected the computer to a screen RJ had repaired the day before and when the system had started, a password prompt had appeared on the screen. Billy had typed in the first thing that came to mind and the system had run a default program.

"If you're seeing this, then Venjix must have won, we have failed," had said a Doctor K from a video that had started playing.

"Or I have literally no way of figuring out your password," Billy had whispered.

Now, he was looking at the paused video, cold sweat running down his face.

"Billy?" RJ had urged again.

"That's her," Billy whispered. "That's Doctor K."

"She's so young," RJ whispered. "I remember seeing her once, when I delivered a pizza here, but I didn't know who she was."

"She is very young, yes," Billy agreed. "Did I ever tell you how I ended up in your pizza parlor in Ocean Bluff?" RJ shook his head. "Well, it's a long story. You never asked about it."

"I have my own secrets, Billy." RJ said in his usual soft voice.

"I was running," Billy admitted. "I was running as far away as I could."

"Running from what?"

"What I'm about to tell you is something that **has got** to remain between the two of us, RJ, you can't tell this to anyone."

"I'm good at keeping secrets."

"I know you are." Billy sighed and then took a deep breath. "Scientific curiosity is a very powerful thing, you know this. It's a lifestyle." RJ nodded. "The love for science can blind you as much as romantic love, if not more, and it certainly blinded me, much more than I should have let it."

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" RJ suggested, trying to calm his friend's nerves.

Billy swallowed hard and nodded. "When I graduated from high school, I spent some time solving a problem with the aging of my body cells, a problem I had caused myself with an aging machine, in an attempt to stop the aliens trying to take over the Earth by reversing time."

"When was this?"

"1995. The villain we were fighting, Master Vile, turned the Earth's time back ten years, to turn us back into helpless children and get us out of the way."

RJ furrowed his brow. "I was sure I had lived that year before..."

"I didn't think anybody else on Earth had noticed. Besides, how old were you in 1985, four? Five?"

RJ shook his head. "Older than I look, remember?"

"Right," Billy dismissed, blinking slowly. "Anyway, I created an aging machine but I was the only one able to use it... long story short, in 1996, I began to age out of control and travelled to a planet named Aquitar to recover my youth drinking from their equivalent of the fountain of youth. I know it sounds crazy."

"Nothing sounds crazy to me," RJ said with a smile. "I have a very open mind."

"Well, I thought I was going to stay there for the rest of my life, but by 1998 I was back on Earth. The Power Rangers had moved their fight away from Angel Grove and I decided to move on, entered college, graduated with honours, you know this much. Shortly after I graduated, I was offered a position in an institute called the Ashford Simmons Institute."

RJ shook his head slightly. "Never heard of it."

"Neither had I," Billy continued. "But they were carrying out very advanced scientific research, RJ, I can't explain how advanced it was. I started there as an assistant researcher, and mentor to some of the students, they had a program for extremely intelligent and scientific driven individuals. My job, besides assisting the students, consisted of helping out on projects and research that, to me, seemed far-fetched and to come out of nowhere." RJ raised his chin in interest. "It was a great environment for someone with great love and interest for science such as myself, but it was, in hind sight, a bit odd. We were made to wear uniforms and we lived in the facilities, we received visitors in supervised rooms, ate exclusively the food they served us, which was supposedly designed to increase our mental potential," he sighed. "It was a very bizarre situation but the science was just so spectacular, RJ, I couldn't get away." His eyes welled up and RJ put a hand on his knee. "I didn't know, RJ, I swear."

"Didn't know what, Billy?"

"I swear I didn't know."

"It's alright, Billy," RJ cooed softly. "What is going on?"

"I never knew where most of the projects came from or where they went, it never occurred to me they could have any application, much less that there was a way to weaponize them."

"Weaponize them?"

Billy pointed at the screen, that still showed Doctor K. "That uniform, I would recognize it anywhere, lab coat and all. That is the Ashford Simmons uniform."

"Doctor K was a student at Ashford Simmons?"

"No. The story is a lot worse than that. It turned out Ashford Simmons was not privately funded as they said, it was a cover, for secret government think-tank called Alphabet Soup."

"Alphabet Soup?"

"I think they took the most promising youngsters from Ashford Simmons and sent them to some hidden facility and forced them to come up with project after project for weapons and such. This is, of course, my own conclusion." Billy swallowed hard. "Maybe that's not how they recruited for Alphabet Soup. I can't be sure. The point is Ashford Simmons was evacuated within a week of the Venjix virus first appearance, give or take."

"Were you there when it was evacuated?"

"Yes, but I didn't know about Venjix. I was just asked to vacate the premises as soon as possible and to never mention my work at Ashford Simmons to anyone, or my life would be in danger."

"And that's when you went to Ocean Bluff?"

"Yes."

RJ pursed his lips in a thoughtful expression. "If you didn't know about the virus, how did you find out about Alphabet Soup?"

"Doctor K told me, in one of our communications. She gave a passing mention to it and I enquired. She explained what it was. She was kidnapped and mentally tortured during her entire childhood, RJ, and many more like her were too," he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying not to cry. "I never made the connection between Ashford Simmons and Alphabet Soup until I saw Doctor K," he pointed at the screen again. "I had never seen her before."

"Despite all your communications?"

"They were almost exclusively written." Billy looked away from both the screen and RJ. "Anyway, I used to work on all kinds of projects and I was sent a computer science one, but not through the usual channels."

"The usual channels?"

"This project was sent to me not by one of my superiors but directly from someone who posed as a student, a girl named Susan Knox. She said she was working on it for the end of the year exposition and wanted me to help her get first place in the contest."

"And it didn't raise any red flags?"

"It should have on first sight, but Susan Knox was listed as a student in Ashford Simmons' system, and I had received from the normal channels projects by her before, but it didn't raise any red flags until I saw what she wanted to do."

"Why?"

"Because it was a self-aware, self-replicating computer virus capable of taking over a military-grade secured mainframe and disable it."

RJ moved back as if Billy had slapped him. "Venjix."

"Yes, Venjix."

"And?"

"I asked her why she wanted to create such a thing, I pointed out to her all the dangers of such a technology and she said she was aware of how dangerous it was. But she also said it was purely a mental exercise, that she didn't plan to actually create the virus, that her real project was developing an antivirus to fight and stop that kind of dangerous technology."

"And you believed her." RJ didn't sound mad and when Billy looked at him and he saw his friend didn't look disapproving either.

"Yes," the scientist admitted. "I was blinded by the science, I believed she was just operating on a mental exercise, that it was all hypothetical, because that's what I would have done to explore this avenue. She convinced me because I let her convince me. I knew it was dangerous but it was also such an exciting opportunity." He put his head between his hands. "I'm sorry, I should have said no, I should have told her that it was too dangerous but... I was blinded. It never occurred to me that she was going to actually do it." Billy started crying. "I helped Doctor K create Venjix, RJ."

RJ didn't say or do anything for a few seconds but then, he stood up and put his arms around Billy, giving him a tight hug. He had a lot of question and reprimands he wanted to make but his friend was obviously wrecked with guilt and there was no point in adding wood to the fire.

"It's water under the bridge, Billy."

"Is it?" Billy asked, still crying earnestly. "Look around you, RJ. I did this."

"No," RJ said strongly. He kneeled in front of Billy again and held his friend's shoulders. "Alphabet Soup did this. Not you, not Doctor K, not even Ashford Simmons. Venjix did this. Alphabet Soup did this."

"I worked for Alphabet Soup."

"You worked for the Ashford Simmons Institute in good faith, Billy. You were trying to help a student finish an interesting project. You didn't want to destroy the world," he pointed at the screen. "And neither did she."

"I wish there was something I could do..."

"There is," RJ said. "You helped her with the original antivirus, you helped her during the fight against Venjix. Create an antivirus that works, one that forces Venjix into a corner and doesn't let it get away. Destroy Venjix in its own world, only you can do that, Billy. I can tear robots to shreds until my hands fall off but that will not destroy Venjix itself."

"I can't fight like that anymore, RJ."

"If you feel you need training, I'll be happy to provide it," RJ said in a stern voice neither of them were expecting.

Billy looked at him. "You are unwilling to fight yourself, RJ. Why should I fight a battle you don't want to fight yourself?"

"I have my reasons for not wanting to fight, Billy, but that doesn't mean I won't do it. Jen asked me to fix the morphers and I will, including my own. I have a lot of things to work out but I will fight this battle. Nobody can do it for me."

"I can't do it. I just can't."

"Why not?"

"I don't have a morpher, for starters."

"I'll make you one."

"I'm too old, RJ."

"You are looking for excuses not to face your creation," RJ spat, sounding to Billy more like a stern martial arts master than he had ever had. "Finding out you helped in the creation of Venjix should spur you to fight it harder, not to coward from it."

"I'm not being a coward, RJ, these powers are meant for teenagers."

"They are not."

"How can you be sure?"

"I am."

"I wish I could be young again..." Billy whispered.

"You don't need to be young to be a Power Ranger."

"You can't be sure of that."

"Yes, I can."

"I am not being a coward, RJ. I just can't fight Venjix physically, I barely made it to Corinth."

"You are being a coward," RJ sentenced. "The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll snap out of it. You made a mistake and you to face the consequences so you can move on."

"Is that what happened to you?" Billy asked after a couple of seconds. "You made a mistake?"

RJ swallowed hard and pursed his lips. "I made a lot of mistakes, Billy."

"Did you face the consequences to each one of them?"

"I tried," RJ almost growled through clenched teeth.

Silence fell between them when Billy sensed RJ was getting angry. He decided to stop pushing for answers RJ obviously didn't want to give.

"I have to go back home," Billy said, getting up. "I will take that training but I don't want the morpher, it's too dangerous. I'll be back later today, I have something there that can help with the repairs of Lauren and Chip's morphers."

RJ stood up and moved aside to let Billy walk towards the door. "Billy."

"Yes?"

"Forgive yourself."

"You are the master," Billy said, looking at his friend in the eye. "When you figure out how to do that, you can teach me."

With that, he walked out of the lab, leaving RJ standing there in silence, trying to process all the information. He felt a pang of pain on his chest and his hand moved to the ring hanging from his neck.

"He's one of us," he whispered. "Probably the only one we have left."

His eyes caught sight of Doctor K on the screen and his chest hurt again.

"We will find her and we will save her," he whispered. "But not like that, we are not doing that anymore."

He turned to the door to find Bridge standing there, looking at him with a puzzled expression.

"Voices?" Bridge asked humorlessly.

"I have to finish lunch," RJ whispered, walking towards the door.

"It won't stop, you know?" Bridge said as RJ passed him. "It won't stop until you admit to it."

"What won't stop, exactly?" RJ said, turning to the psychic, making the officer flinch and lower his gaze.

"The anger," Bridge said in a very low voice. "The anger won't stop until you admit that you're feeling it."

RJ didn't answer him, choosing to make his way to the kitchen and grabbing the knife to keep chopping vegetables. He stood there, frozen, his sight fixed on the chopping block.

For the first time since he had become a chef, his knife hand was trembling.


	13. Real worth

Chapter 13 – Real worth

Billy returned to the lab with a small duffel bag in his hand. He put it on the couch, opened it, looked at the contents and sighed.

He took out a small device he had created a while back and closed the bag again, leaving it on the couch.

He made his way to the lab, where RJ was working on Lauren's morpher, through a complex set of lenses he had attached to a pair of safety googles; and Bridge was sitting at Jen's terminal, reading what seemed to be a long list of items.

"RJ?" The former blue ranger called.

"Yes?" RJ answered, not looking up from the morpher.

"I brought something for you."

RJ looked up at him, putting the goggles over his forehead. "I love presents."

"Well, this is more of a loan, actually."

"Oh."

Billy handed him the device. "It's a condenser," he explained while RJ looked at the device from every angle. "It's for fixing the connection to the morphing grid." He pointed in the direction of the table.

"Thanks," RJ said with a smile, setting the device on the work table. "It will come useful."

Billy smiled slightly and turned away from RJ, feeling very uncomfortable in the presence of his friend.

"Billy," RJ started, throwing a quick glance at Bridge to make sure the cadet was still distracted. "It's alright," he assured. Billy looked down and let out a sad sigh. RJ put his hand on Billy's shoulder. "Hey, you know what to do," he said and smiled slightly. Billy nodded and RJ smiled wider. "Write that antivirus, only you can do it."

"Right now, I need a break," Billy whispered.

"Then take a break," RJ conceded. "But then it's back to the fight, Billy. Don't surrender."

"When was the last time you took a break from the fight?" Billy asked him.

RJ smirked, impressed by Billy's ability to pick up on his unsaid words. "It has been a while," RJ said. His expression turned dreamy and he smirked. "I have something in mind, though," he said mysteriously.

Billy turned to look at what RJ was looking at, smiled and shook his head. "I guess it's not meditation."

"It's a form of mediation," the other man said and turned back to the work table. "But for now, I have to finish this."

"RJ?"

"Yes?"

"Take that break," Billy said. "It's more important than anything."

"Who's the master now?" RJ asked, putting his goggles back over his eyes.

Billy walked out of the lab and found Chip on the kitchen area, looking gloomy.

"Chip, is everything alright?"

Chip looked up at him. "Hey, I guess so."

"What's up?" Billy asked, opening the fridge and pulling out a carton of juice to pour himself a glass.

"Well, it's just... Never mind, you'll think I'm being stupid."

"Whatever is bothering you is not stupid," Billy said with an encouraging smile.

"Well, I see you guys in the lab, working to fix it, and now RJ is fixing morphers," he threw his hands up in an exasperated gesture. "And look at them," he added, pointing in the direction of the garage, where Jen and Lauren were sparring. "They're amazing at fighting," he then put his hands on his chest. "I'm useless to this team."

Billy looked at him, slightly confused. "You asked to join this team."

"I know," Chip said. "But, in hindsight, that was a very stupid thing to do, I bring nothing to this team. You guys have no reason to keep me around."

"Chip, everybody willing to fight this battle is valuable. RJ mentioned you practice archery."

"Yes."

"Are you good?"

"I'm great," Chip said, but he didn't sound cheered up. "But what use is that? I couldn't find a proper position to fire from when the grinders came to JKP. I'm useless."

"Chip, you are welcome here," Billy started.

"To offer what? Moral support?" Chip asked rather loudly. "Because I don't think I offer even that right now." He started walking away from the kitchen.

"Chip!" Billy called after him.

Chip stopped and turned, he looked at Billy, threw a glance over the blue ranger's shoulder and rolled his eyes.

Billy looked over his shoulder and saw RJ walking out of the lab, his goggles no longer on his head.

"I don't want a pep talk," Chip warned.

RJ showed him the palms of his hands to indicate his surrender. He opened the fridge and poured himself some juice on a glass, in absolute silence.

"You're not useless, Chip," Billy said.

"Yes, I am!" Chip almost yelled. "Magic was the only thing that made me special and I don't have it anymore!"

"Woah, woah," RJ interrupted, raising his glass. "Magic is not what made you special, Chip. You make yourself special, your good sense of humor, your positive energy, your good vibes... they have nothing to do with magic powers."

"Look at all my good vibes now," Chip muttered bitterly.

Billy and RJ exchanged a look. "Chip, we know how you feel," Billy said. Chip scoffed. "Well, I do, really."

"I do too," RJ added.

"How could either one of you ever feel useless?" Chip demanded. "You're a genius and he's a kung fu master!" He looked at them and threw his hands in the air again. "In fact, you're both geniuses and kung fu masters!"

"I'm not a genius," RJ said, shaking his head.

"And I'm not a kung fu master."

"You are fixing morphers!" Chip accused, pointing at RJ. "So don't tell me you're not a genius. And you have to be at least a very good fighter!"

Both wolves remained silent.

"See?!" Chip yelled. "How could either of you ever feel useless?"

"Because we weren't always like this, Chip," RJ said softly. "I know it's hard to believe, but I wasn't born a kung fu master, in fact, I was very bad when I started out."

"Right."

RJ seemed stung and looked at Billy.

"Chip, when I was first chosen to be a Power Ranger, I thought it was only because I was friends with the others," Billy started. "I mean, how could I -the world's least coordinated person ever- be a superhero? Who would ever choose me to be a superhero?"

"You had your brains," Chip said. "You were there to help with the brainy stuff."

"That's what I thought," Billy said. "But my friends weren't stupid. Most of the stuff I helped them figure out, they would have figured out themselves, perhaps it would have taken them longer, but they would have figured them out."

"You are a genius!"

"And yet, I was chosen to be a Power Ranger because of my heart, not because of my brain."

Chip scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"I mean it, I was given the chance to walk away, Chip, but I didn't. I stayed because I felt it was the right thing to do. I couldn't fight, I couldn't even see without my glasses, but I was willing to fight for my planet." Chip remained quiet, looking at the floor. "I was very scared and I thought I didn't have anything useful to bring to that battle, just like I didn't think I had anything to bring to this battle, but I was wrong. I had the will to fight and that alone made me valuable. The will to fight this battle, makes me valuable now." RJ looked at Billy, his eyes sparkling with joy, but he didn't say anything. He didn't even smile. "And if that's all you bring to this battle, just your will to fight against Venjix, your will to fight for what's right, then that makes you more than useful, it makes you valuable. It makes you important."

"I just..." Chip started, looking at them. "I just wish I had something less default to bring to this battle, something more substantial, like my magic."

RJ scoffed. "Dude, so you can't perform spells anymore, who cares?"

"I care."

"Okay, but why?"

"Because I have nothing else!"

"Yes, you do," RJ said. "Chip, you are your own kind of genius."

"Right, more like my own kind of idiot."

"I've seen you at the restaurant, the way you wait the tables, help with the kitchen and collect, man, I used to have five people do what you and Lauren do by yourselves and they weren't as good as you two are. And it's mostly because you're a great strategist, you make the plan, and Lauren helps you carry it out and it's always a success."

"So I'm good at waiting tables, I'm sure that will defeat Venjix."

"You are a great strategist," RJ insisted. "That is a very rare skill, Chip. I'm sure with the right information, you could foresee Venjix's next move and work a plan to stop it."

"You put too much faith in my chess skills."

"You sell yourself short," RJ corrected. "Foreseeing an enemy's next move and planning a way to defeat them is what makes great warriors, Chip."

"Whatever."

"That's what made me a master," RJ told him. "I wasn't particularly coordinated or strong or wise. I was smart. Not a genius, Chip, just smarter than the other guy."

"That's hard to believe."

"You know, not everything I say is a lie," RJ said, sounding slightly insulted. "I'm serious. All it takes is being smarter than the other guy, Chip."

"The other guy is an almighty computer virus," Chip reminded him.

"Venjix is powerful but he's not almighty," RJ cleared.

"And he can be outsmarted," Billy added. "He is a very complex program but he is still a computer program. He's not intelligent, Chip, he takes data and reacts to it, he doesn't analyze it, not like a human would."

"Not like you would," RJ said.

"You really think I can be useful?"

"Yes," both wolves said in unison.

"And you are great moral support," RJ added, putting his hand on Chip's shoulder. "I have seen you smile when everybody else was frowning, Chip, and that takes real strength."

"I can't smile my way out of everything," Chip said.

"Yes, you can. You can smile your way through everything and that, my friend, makes you invaluable to this team."

Chip finally looked in better spirits and even smiled slightly. "Yeah, well, you're all a bunch of grumps."

"We are," RJ said. "And that's why we need you."

Chip smiled.

Billy went to the couch and pulled something out of the bag. "Do you still play, Chip?" He asked, showing him what he was holding.

It was a chess set.

"Oh, boy, do I?" The redhead said with a wide smile.

Billy pointed at the kitchen counter and they sat down to play.

RJ looked up and saw Jen and Lauren had stopped sparring and were looking at them. Jen caught his eye and smiled at him.

He smiled back before he could stop himself.


	14. Seeing stars

Chapter 14 – Seeing stars.

RJ lay on his back on the roof of the garage, looking up at the dome, reflecting about the day.

He smiled at the thought of Chip, who had spent the afternoon playing chess with Billy, to the unbelievable result of Chip winning ten times straight until Billy caught up to his strategy. RJ didn't like chess very much, but he was glad they had had fun.

Bridge had been reading on Jen's terminal all day, taking several breaks to just stare at him from the other side of the lab. He had caught the cadet staring and had smiled in what he hoped had been a reassuring way, but Bridge looked scared every time and returned to his reading. RJ wondered what he was reading about.

Jen and Lauren had spent the afternoon training on the garage space, he had heard them grunting and laughing as they sparred. At one point, he had walked out of the lab to get a drink and had seen them sword fighting expertly. He had watched while he drank his water, impressed by their skill. He had never been very good with swords.

After spending all afternoon working on Lauren's morpher, RJ had made his way to the roof and had laid on his back, looking up at the dome hoping to find peace and calm, but the dome just failed to bring him that sense of oneness with the universe the real night sky used to give him.

The door to the roof opened and Jen walked out.

"There you are."

"Hey."

"What are you doing?" She asked, sitting next to him.

"Staring at the ceiling," he said, pointing at the dome's fake starry night.

"It's a beautiful starry night," she commented, looking up as well.

"It's all wrong," he commented.

"What's all wrong?" She laid next to him as she asked this.

"The stars, they're all wrong."

"How can the stars be wrong?" She asked, turning to him.

He looked at her and smiled. She kept forgetting about the dome. "It's fake, Jen," he reminded. "The stars on the dome are not the real sky and it's obvious."

She looked at the dome again. "Is it?"

"Yes."

She looked at the dome and he looked at her, a small smile on his face. She turned to him. "The constellations are there, I mean, I don't know much about astronomy, but I can recognize some of them."

"They're all there," he agreed, still looking at her. "But they're in the wrong place."

She held his stare. "What do you mean?"

"They're not where they should be if you're looking at them from this position on Earth."

"Oh." She looked up at the fake stars and back to him again. "You must be big on astronomy."

"I like my stars, yes," he whispered. "Out of all of the things Venjix took from me, I think I miss the stars the most."

Silence fell and they just lay there, looking at each other.

She sat up. "Listen, RJ, I wanted to say I'm sorry."

He sat up too. "What for?"

"I've been very harsh on you."

He smiled. "I get on people's nerves. Specially people like you."

"People like me?"

"Yeah, like you and Billy," he smiled and licked his lips quickly. "You know, the self-proclaimed rational ones."

She snickered. "I see," she put her hand on his shoulder. "Listen, when I said you hadn't given me any reason to trust you-"

"You meant it."

"Not really."

"Right."

"I meant you could open up a little bit."

He snickered and pointed at her with his index finger. "You have no authority to ask me to open up."

"I told you about my ex," she defended, sounding insulted.

"No, you didn't. You didn't even tell me his name."

"Alex. His name is Alex." He nodded but said nothing. "This is the part where you share something back."

He remained silent for a few seconds and then said: "I wasn't really captured by Venjix."

She looked at him and nodded, unfazed by his revelation. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Not really," he admitted. "There's something about you that makes me want to open up to you," he told her and got up, to look over the ledge.

"And yet…" she whispered, following him.

"It's not that I don't want to tell anyone," he said. "It's that I can't."

"I did pretty awful things when I was at war," she admitted, looking down at the street. "Many things I'm not proud of. Many things I can't tell anyone."

RJ looked down at the street too, his hand slipping into his pants pocket and finding his bandanna there. He ran his thumb over the fabric. "I think everybody's done things they're not proud of." He pulled his hand out of his pocket and it immediately went to the ring hanging from his neck.

"I held on to a ring for a very long time, too," she commented, looking at his hand. "It was the only physical connection I had to Alex when I thought he was dead," she pointed at his neck. "Whose ring is that?"

"It's nobody's," he whispered, moving his hand away from the ring.

"You don't have to tell me," she whispered, looking down at the street again.

"I mean it's mine," he added. "It doesn't connect me to anybody else, only to myself. To who I used to be."

"Who you used to be before Venjix?"

"So much falls into that category," he said, shaking his head, his eyes closed. He had a pained expression on his face.

"I guessed it meant a lot to you, because you looked for it so desperately when you dropped it," she commented.

"Dropped it?" He sounded genuinely confused.

"Yes, when your restaurant was attacked," she reminded him. He swallowed hard and nodded slowly. "You dropped it and looked for it like your life depended on it when you finished with the Grinders."

He looked at her fixedly and she gave him a small smile and a shrug. He sighed. "I didn't drop it," he whispered. "I took it off."

"What for?"

"To let my out of control animal spirit back into this plane," he said with his eyes closed.

"I thought your animal spirit was under your control."

"I told you the control could be lost, remember?"

"And you lost it?"

"A while back, yes," he admitted. He looked at her and she was looking at him with a worried expression. "Think of the ring as a leash of sorts. It keeps my animal spirit in the spirit world, away from me."

"Why would you want that?"

"Because it's very angry," RJ admitted, his eyes welling up. "It's rabid. I can't regain control over it, it won't listen to me." He swallowed hard. "And it was affecting my behavior. So, I had to get away from it."

"Affecting your behavior how? Was it your animal spirit that made you rage against those Grinders like that?"

He nodded, swallowing hard again. "For two years, I fought my own war against Venjix. No morpher, no plan, just me, my rabid animal spirit and stupid idea after stupid idea. I blew up factories, broke open prisoner camps. I just rampaged against Venjix, feeling like I would never get enough of that."

"Why? What happened?"

"I snapped," he whispered. "It has happened before."

"Did Venjix's return made your spirit angry again?"

"That's the thing, it never stopped being angry. It never calmed down, its desire to keep destroying robots never stopped."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you still angry at Venjix?" She put her hand on his arm. "You mentioned your animal spirit is a part of you."

He looked at her and inhaled deeply. "Yes. Venjix made me do a lot of stupid things, it turned me back into a man I thought I would never be again and I just can't get back to being me."

She chuckled. "Sometimes it sounds like you've lived hundreds of years."

He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "Yeah, sometimes it feels like I have."

"Perhaps you just need a little help," she whispered, looking into his blue eyes. "I know what that feels like, you know? Wanting revenge so bad you'd risk your own life to get it." She moved her hand to his jaw and caressed his beard softly. "When I thought Ransik had killed Alex, all I could think about was destroying him, to the point where I once risked my life going after him alone."

"Did you destroy him?"

"No. I got past my desire of revenge."

"How?"

"I found something else to focus on," she moved closer to him and took his hand in hers. "Someone else to focus on."

A small, mischievous smile appeared on his face. "What are you suggesting?"

She shrugged. "Find something else to hold on to."

"That is a very good suggestion," he whispered, smiling at her. She smiled back at him and squeezed his hand.

Without another word, he pulled her closer to him and wrapped his other arm around her waist, pressing his lips against hers for a kiss. They kissed deeply and passionately, he wasn't holding back and was very surprised to feel she was just as eager as he was. He was taken aback when she wrapped her arms around his neck and probed past his lips with her tongue for a French kiss. He let her in and they kept kissing for what felt like hours but couldn't have been more than a minute.

He broke the kiss but didn't let her go, pressing his forehead against hers.

"Okay," she whispered.

"Okay is good," he whispered back. "Okay is better than the sharp slap I was expecting."

They both chuckled and he let her go. "It was a good kiss," she told him.

"Thanks. Although, I'm a little out of practice."

"Well, you know what they say, practice makes-" She looked down at the street again and pushed him aside to take a closer look at something she had spotted. RJ followed her sight and saw someone moving on the street, trying to remain in the dark. "Is that Billy?"

"I'm not sure," he said. He looked at the silhouette until the person walking had no option but walking into the light briefly. "Yes, that is Billy."

"Where is he going?"

"No idea."

"Do you think we should follow him?"

"Yes," he walked towards the door. "Come on, before we lose him."

She walked to the door but stopped before going into the building. "About that kiss-"

"We'll finish what we started later," he promised. "Duty calls."


	15. A drink and a cut

Chapter 15 – A drink and a cut.

Billy walked away from the garage, trying to remain in the shadows. He didn't want anyone to see him and ask questions about what he was about to do.

RJ's words about the Ranger powers not being exclusively for youngsters had fallen on deaf ears, but he knew he had to join the others in the physical battle, because there would be one, it was the next logical steps for Venjix: creating a new army and trying to destroy Corinth again.

He walked about three blocks away from the garage and found himself in one of Corinth's many parks. There was an area that was almost pitch black, the trees were covering the street lights and that was exactly what he needed.

He sat at the base of the tree and took a deep breath. He looked at the container in his hand: it was made of aluminium and had a screw-in cover that sealed it shut almost hermetically.

He put the bottle in front of him and looked at it, taking another deep breath. "What are you doing, Billy?" He asked himself in a whisper.

But he had to do it. He wasn't in bad shape, he had kept working out and training in martial arts as he had learned from Jason and Tommy –and much later, from RJ- but his body was obviously not what it had been before. He was almost sure his body wouldn't be able to hold ranger powers if he didn't do this.

He closed his eyes, trying to steel his resolve. It wasn't a pleasant idea. He had put a brave face for the other rangers, but drinking water from Aquitar's Eternal Falls didn't cause a pleasant, tickling sensation. It was painful and confusing and very, very far from pleasant.

"I think two sips would be enough," he whispered to himself. "Don't want to turn into a teenager again, only knock back a couple of years."

As he reached for the bottles, he heard a noise coming from the direction of the garage. His head spun rapidly and his eyes scouted the dark, trying to see any figures in the dark. Could it be Grinders?

He waited a few seconds and the sound didn't repeat, so he reached for the bottle again. He unscrewed the cap and brought it to his lips. Closing his eyes and letting out one last resigned breath, he took a large gulp of the bottle's contents and screwed the cap back on as quickly as he could.

He dropped the bottle as his insides started to feel like they were on fire. He felt dizzy and disoriented and dropped to the floor, clutching his abdomen. Then his face started to feel like it was melting and he covered it with his hands, trying to drown out as much of his pained screams as he could.

He was lost in his pain and disorientation when he felt a pair of strong hands grab him by the shoulders and turn him over.

"Let me see," he heard a voice he had heard before whisper urgently next to him. "Come on, man, let me see," he heard again and felt the hands grab his wrists and try to pull his hands away from his face.

"It hurts!" Billy groaned.

"What did you take?" The soft voice asked him.

"It hurts..." Billy repeated, feeling his entire body on fire.

"His heart rate is very accelerated and his temperature is very high, RJ," he heard another voice say.

"Can you give him something for the pain?" RJ's voice asked, closer to Billy.

"Not without knowing what he took."

"The bottle," RJ told his companion. "Can you see what's in it?"

Billy grasped RJ's wrists and dug his fingernails in the other man's flesh. "The bottle... don't... leave it..."

"What's in it, Billy?" RJ asked, apparently completely unfazed by Billy's nails.

"Leave it..."

"Ok," RJ said softly. "Leave the bottle," he told his companion.

"It doesn't matter, I don't know what's in it. It reads as water, there's nothing poisonous in it, absolutely nothing."

"Stop," Billy panted.

"It's okay, man," RJ whispered. "We've got you, it's alright."

Billy let go off RJ's wrists and lay there panting, the pain finally subsiding but his sense of disorientation still very present.

"Where... Where..."

"In Corinth City, Billy," RJ answered. "You walked out of the garage towards a park and drank from a bottle. Do you remember?"

"Who are you?" He asked the other man, when he opened his eyes.

"It's me, RJ," the Wolf Master said, running his hand over Billy's forehead, to sweep away the sweat. "And Jen's here with me."

"Who's Jen?"

"It's okay," he heard a woman say next to him. "Take it easy, breathe," she instructed. He heard a soft whirring noise and saw a flash of blue light.

"How is he?" RJ asked, still looking down at Billy, looking strikingly like a concerned father.

"His vitals are slowly returning to normal," she told him. "His temperature is back down, and he seems to be breathing normally, his heart beat is regular and his blood oxygen levels are normal."

RJ simply nodded, his gaze still on Billy. After a minute, Billy's mind started to return to normal and he could finally recognize his friends.

"What are you doing here?" He asked hoarsely. "How did you find me?"

"We were on the roof of the garage, we saw you sneaking out and decide to follow you," Jen told him, her attention on a device she was pointing at him with a steady hand.

"What did you take?" RJ asked seriously. "Billy, what did you just do?"

Billy sat up and RJ wasted no time in putting his arm around his waist, holding him in place.

"I'm fine, RJ," Billy complained, dismissively. RJ didn't let go. "I said I'm fine," Billy snapped, looking at RJ's face.

RJ pursed his lips and looked at Jen. He rolled his eyes and let Billy go.

"What did you take?" RJ asked again. "I don't need to tell you what this looks like, do I?"

"Actually, yes, you do," Billy told him.

RJ looked at Jen and licked his lips. "Jen, can you give us a minute?"

"Sure," she said, getting up and walking away from them, putting her device back in storage.

RJ looked at Billy, the best he could in the dark space, and put his hand on the blue ranger's shoulder. "Did you just try to kill yourself?" He asked point-blank.

"What?!" Billy shook the other man's hand off his shoulder. "Of course not, what the hell?"

"I had to ask, specially after what we talked about before."

"No, RJ, I didn't try to kill myself," Billy assured him. "Quite the opposite, actually."

"What do you mean?"

Billy grabbed the bottle and showed it to RJ. "This bottle contains water from Aquitar's Eternal Falls. Remember I mentioned going to Aquitar to recover my youth?"

"Yes."

"Well, I brought some back, just in case. I drank some of it to set my body back a few years, with the intention of joining any physical battles that may come in the future."

"Billy, I told you these powers-"

"Are for teenagers and, maybe, young adults, RJ, I know how they work."

"I know how they work too, I've made morphers myself, Billy. And I told you, you don't have to be young to be a Power Ranger."

"You failed to mention how you know that," Billy said. "As far as I know, your students were around 18, your friend Dom was 21 and you were 23."

"25," RJ corrected automatically. "I can't tell you how I know but I know for a fact that your age has nothing to do with-"

"It has to do with whether your body is strong enough to hold the power," Billy informed him. "Your body's physical strength is crucial to determine whether you can hold the powers or not."

"That's not necessarily true," RJ insisted. "Okay, so you drank the water. Did something go wrong? Why were you writhing on the floor in pain?"

"Because having each cell of your body reprogramed to act like a younger cell is an unsurprisingly painful process, RJ."

RJ looked at him but said nothing. He pursed his lips slightly and nodded. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes, the pain only lasts for a couple of minutes."

"How long does the effect of the water last?"

"What do you mean?"

"How long will you be younger?"

"The effect is permanent, RJ, my cells were made younger and they will start to age again from there."

"How old are you now, then?"

"I calculate around 25, I'd have to see myself in the mirror to be sure."

"You will need a morpher," RJ whispered, avoiding eye-contact, although looking at Billy's face was hard in the dark. "I've been working on one, for you."

"Thank you," Billy said. "You were right," he looked in the general direction Jen had walked away in, to check she was far away enough from them. "Discovering what I did should make me want to fight Venjix harder, and it did. The team will not be complete without a blue ranger. I'll take that morpher."

"I'm making it work with your animal spirit, so your armour may not be the one you're used to."

"It's alright, as long as it's blue," Billy said, moving to get up. RJ got up faster and helped his friend to his feet. "I'm fine, RJ, really."

RJ looked at him unconvinced. "If you say so."

As they walked towards Jen, Billy threw a side glance at RJ and asked: "What were you and Jen doing together on the roof of the garage?"

"We were looking at the stars," RJ answered with a smirk.

"Right."

"And we may have kissed."

"May?"

"Well, no," RJ corrected. "We did kiss. We may have done something a lot more interesting if you hadn't decided to sneak out at that exact moment."

"Well, don't let me stop you," Billy told him, patting him on the back. "You need this, RJ. Go for it."

They reached Jen and she turned around to look at them. RJ looked at her eyes and blushed under his stubble.

"What?" She asked.

He shook his head. "Nothing."

Billy smiled and started walking back towards the garage. "I'll see you back home," he told them, leaving them behind.

RJ stood there, looking at Jen.

"What?" She asked again, with a nervous laugh.

He caressed her face and leaned in to steal a kiss. "It's nothing, really," he insisted, taking her hand. "Let's go home."

Outside of the dome, prisoner inside her own mind, Doctor K looked at the bright red number on the ceiling. She was so close to losing control of her actions.

"Doctor," he heard Venjix ask from behind her, still using Ziggy's looks and voice.

"What do you want Venjix?"

"Who is Dr. William Cranston?"

Venjix was standing next to her chair, very close to her. She avoided looking at him by typing frantically on the black keyboard in front of her.

"Never heard of him."

"Really?" Venjix asked, grabbing the keyboard and throwing away. It smashed against the wall. "That's curious," he continued, sitting on the small table in front of her. "Because I learned his name from your memories," he put a hand on the top of her head and forced her face up, so she was looking at him. "Who is William Cranston?"

"He gave me assistance with some projects when I was in Alphabet Soup, I've never met him."

"Did he give you assistance in this project?" Venjix asked, putting his hands on his chest.

"What do you mean?"

"I hate it when you play dumb, K, it cuts my patience short."

"Yes, he helped me with you, Venjix."

"What exactly did he help you with?"

She remained silent. Venjix rolled his eyes, Ziggy's eyes, and showed her the projection where she could see what her body was doing. She saw her hand pick up a pair of scissors and hold them over her thigh.

"My patience is wearing thin, K," Venjix threatened.

"He helped me with the antivirus and the firewall," she admitted, her gaze fixed on what her hand was doing in the projection.

"Is he in Corinth?"

"I don't know." She saw her hand grasp the scissors tighter and raised them higher over her thigh. "Yes! He's in Corinth. He helped me when my ranger team was fighting your army."

"Alright, then," Venjix said, getting up. "I guess it's time you made me a new attackbot. Sending Grinders against your pizza friend didn't work as planned, so you understand my desire to make sure the only other human who can stop me is properly taken care of."

"I won't make you a new attackbot, Venjix."

Venjix looked at K and she stared back at him, her face a mask of resolution. He started laughing.

"Look at the number on the ceiling, K," he told her. "I only have to wait a couple of hours and you won't have a choice but to do whatever I ask you to do. I don't need this part of your mind, I only need your knowledge and to control your body. You will make me a new attackbot." She swallowed hard, trying very hard not to start crying. "If it makes you feel better, you probably won't even know you did."

"You won't win, Venjix. You will be defeated over and over."

"I've already won," he whispered in her ear and disappeared. She saw herself walk up to a reflective surface and her hand went up to her hair. Helplessly, she saw her hands cut her hair, almost at the root.

A tear ran down her face as she stared at the reflected face. It was devoid of all emotion, her green eyes lined with red, a sign of her exhaustion, and completely blank and dull. Without her hair, she looked more like a prisoner than she ever thought she would.

This was a battle she wasn't going to win.

She crossed her arms and curled onto herself. She was completely powerless.

Her only hope now was to be rescued.

But by whom?


	16. Out on a limb

Chapter 16 – Out on a limb.

When they got back to the garage, Billy said good night to Jen and RJ and hurried to his room, to shower and see how old his body was now.

RJ and Jen watched him walk away and stood there, in awkward silence.

"So... that was that," RJ commented with a shrug.

"What was that, exactly?" She asked, turning to him.

"He... he took some measures because he has incorrect information."

"Wow!" She chuckled. "You've really taken the whole 'choosing your words carefully' thing to a whole new level."

"Well, it's not really my place to say."

"Did he try to hurt himself?"

"No. He's not that kind of person."

"Okay."

Silence fell between them again, and he swallowed hard, looked around to make sure nobody was watching and took her hand. She grasped his fingers in hers and smiled at him. He pulled her closer to him and she followed his lead.

"So," he started. "Should we finish what we started on the roof?"

"Sounds like a plan," she whispered and smiled at him.

She led the walk to her room and entered one step ahead of him. The second he crossed the threshold, he wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her back to him, burying his face in her neck.

She let out a small sigh of pleasure and he closed the door behind them. Still kissing her neck and jaw, he locked it.

She turned in his embrace and kissed him on the lips, their tongues finding their way to each other's mouth quickly, as hands started exploring the new lover before them.

She slid her hands under his shirt, running them up his back and abdomen, feeling his defined and tense muscles under the soft skin. He groaned when the caresses moved to the chest and the kisses moved to his jaw and neck. She obviously knew what she wanted and how to get it.

He felt her fingers sliding down his body towards his belt buckle and kissed her on the lips again, putting his hands on her buttocks and pulling her to him.

They took the two steps that separated them from the bed, still kissing, and he broke the kiss by gently pushing her to the bed. She fell back on it and smiled at him. He licked his lips rapidly and took off his shirt, noticing his pants were already undone.

He leaned in and kissed her, grabbed the hem of her shirt and took it off. Her breasts were still held by a pink sports bra and she bit her lips when his hungry gaze fell on them. His blue eyes found her brown ones and both pairs sparkled with the joy of anticipation.

She moved forward and pulled his pants down, her eyes still on his. He smiled at her and got out of his pants, leaving them on the floor. She had found well-filled boxer briefs under the jeans and it was now her gaze that had turned hungry and intense.

He kissed her again, gently pushing her on her back, he supported his weight on one arm and ran his free hand down from her jaw, to her breast, to her hips. He buried his face in her neck again, trailing small kisses all the way down to her chest, his stubble tickling the skin his soft lips set on fire.

"Undress me," she begged in a whisper.

He got up again and put his hands on her waist, hooking his fingers in the hem of her pants and slowly pulling them down, the tips of his fingers running down her legs. He noticed she took in a sharp breath and held it while his hands travelled down her legs. He took off her shoes and slid the pants off completely. He ran his hands up her legs and noticed she tensed up again. He kissed her left thigh and then the right one and when he looked up at her face, it was tense and had a worried expression.

"We don't have to do this if you don't want to," he told her, stepping back.

"I do want to," she told him, opening her eyes.

"Your mouth says one thing and the rest of your body says something else."

"It's-" She took a deep breath. "It's nothing. It has nothing to do with what you, what we, are doing. I really want to do this with you, I'm not lying."

"I'm not saying you're lying," he lay on the bed next to her and put his hand on her abdomen. "But you're not comfortable and I can't carry on like this."

"It's okay, really, it's nothing."

"Looks like something to me," he moved his hand to her hair and caressed it away from her face. "A very important something."

"I was in a war before coming here. I've got... souvenirs, if you will."

"Souvenirs?"

"Yes."

"I won't think you are any less beautiful if you have scars, Jen."

"It's not a scar. It's something worse."

He took a few seconds to try to understand what she was saying. "Jen, they didn't—I mean, you weren't—Nobody forced you to-"

"No, no, no, no!" She put her hand on his jaw and caressed his beard. "No. Everything I did, I did because I wanted to. Maybe not for the right reasons but I wanted to. I would have torn their balls off, no."

He chuckled at her comment and she smiled. "Then what is it?"

She looked at his chest and bit her lips again, this time nervously. "I told you there were things about the war I couldn't tell anyone."

"I won't judge you, Jen. I have a very open mind."

"Really?" She asked. He nodded. "Share with me what Venjix did to make you snap and I'll tell you my war story."

He looked at her eyes and caressed her hair again. He leaned towards her and kissed her, then got up to grab his pants from the floor.

"I guessed as much," she whispered.

He put his hand in the pants pocket and took out his zebra print bandanna. He let the pants fall to the floor again and sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard. He invited her to sit next to him with a move of his head. She moved to him and they sat there, next to each other, in their underwear. He showed her the bandanna.

"This is my favorite bandanna," he started, his gaze fixed on the fabric. "I have more than a dozen, they match the uniform and they keep my hair back while I'm cooking, but this is my favorite one," She moved her hand towards the bandanna and he handed it to her. "You said you once had a ring you felt was your only connection to Alex, when you thought he was dead. Well, that bandanna is my only connection to someone." She looked at him, her expression serious. She put her hand on his biceps and gave him the bandanna back. "Her name was Fran."

"Was she someone special?"

"Yes, she was," he said and smiled in spite of himself. "She was caring and loyal and loving," he closed his mouth and swallowed hard.

"She sounds great."

"She was the best friend I've ever had," he said with a broken voice, his eyes welling up. "And trust me, I've had a lot of friends."

"A special friend?"

He looked at her and snickered. "Not that kind of special friend," he shook his head with his eyes closed and raised his eyebrows. "Not at all that kind of special friend. She was just a friend, who was very special to me."

"I see," she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. He rested his head on it.

"Venjix's forces, mainly Grinders, had been attacking Ocean Bluff, the city where we lived, for a while. But Ocean Bluff had been through something similar, with Dai Shi and its Rin Shi –who were the reason yours truly became a Power Ranger- and people weren't as scared of them as they should have been. And Fran was something else. She was brave to the point of being reckless sometimes."

"Was she a kung fu master too?"

"No, but I do suspect she was a wolf. I never got around to checking if she was, but she helped me regain control of my wolf with a single touch of her hand."

"Regain control of your wolf?"

"Yeah, like I said, the wolf is a fickle creature. Dai Shi attacked it and tainted it in some way I still don't really understand, and it made me turn into a werewolf for several nights in a row. My students didn't notice there was something wrong with me, only Fran did. And even after I had to tell them about the werewolf thing, Fran chose to stay alone with me, knowing I could turn at any moment and hurt her."

"That sounds brave to the point of recklessness."

"Yeah, she could be so head-strong," He went silent for a few seconds and she took his hand in hers. "Anyway, she worked at my restaurant in Ocean Bluff and one time, she decided to stay late to help me do the inventory of the ingredients and tools. We were so busy counting cans and tomatoes, we lost track of time and when we looked up, it was dark. I offered to walk her home and she refused, because I'd have to walk back alone. I asked her to spend the night, I had a loft over the restaurant, but she called me silly. I offered to call Dom, her boyfriend, to come get her, she said it was the same thing as me walking her home. She said she'd be fine, because, why would Venjix want her? I tried to stop her, but once she made up her mind, she was like a train. You could get on board or get run over but she wasn't stopping."

"She sounds like the kind of woman I'd like to spend time with."

"You would have loved her," he told her with a smiled. "She walked out of the restaurant, it was still early, I guess. I followed her all the way to the sidewalk and she ordered me to go back inside and lock myself in. I told her I'd watch over her until she was out of sight. She was about a block away from the restaurant when the Grinders came down the street. They spotted her. She was anything but stupid and turned back to me, running as fast as she could. The shot at her, thankfully they missed. She made it back to the restaurant with a patrol of Grinders at her heel. I pulled her inside and locked the door behind her. I... I..." He took a deep breath and tangled his fingers with hers. "I pushed her into the pantry and gave her this," he held the bandanna for her to see. "I told her to hold on to it because it was my favorite. I told her to stay still and quiet, closed the door and put a table in front of it. I heard the Grinders break into the restaurant, still following her, hell bent on killing her. She asked me to stay in the pantry with her, but I ignored her. I walked towards the Grinders, one of them took a wooden giraffe figurine from one of the tables, looked at me and snapped it in half, just because it could."

She could feel him trembling softly, his eyes turning a dark blue that was almost violet. She kissed his shoulder and he sniffed, kissing her forehead.

"I don't remember anything else until Casey put me in the cold shower," he sighed. "I was covered in bruises and cuts, it felt like every inch of my body hurt. I was bleeding. Nothing serious, somehow, but still, I was hurt. I went back downstairs and Casey said I had already checked if Fran was there. I didn't remember. She was gone and the restaurant was trashed. But, worse of all, it was littered in Grinder pieces. Grinders call for help when they are attacked. The patrol that followed Fran was followed by at least two more. I destroyed them all and I don't remember anything at all. I found the bandanna on the floor of the pantry, that was when I snapped. I never regained control of my animal spirit. That night, in a fit of anger and frustration I destroyed my own loft. When I came back to my senses, I packed my bag and left, leaving everybody who knew me to think I had been captured or killed by Venjix."

"What did you do after?"

"I spent two years breaking into every single Venjix factory and prisoner camp I could find, destroying as many of its robots as I could. At first, trying to find her, and later, to avenge her, because the furthest I got from Ocean Bluff, the more certain I was she was dead." He put the bandanna on the night stand and then put his hand on her leg. "Your turn."

She looked at his hand, resting on her right thigh, but didn't ask him to move it. Instead, she started her own story. "I can't give you too many details but humankind was, will be, at war with an alien race. They are big, powerful, evil from where we are standing. I enlisted. I have been a Time Force officer for years, also a Power Ranger, I've been fighting big and powerful monster for a long time. Time Force didn't let me take my morpher with me, I was just another soldier. I fought for over two years, unsure that we even had a chance of winning."

"Everybody who goes to war thinks they have a chance of winning."

"We did, at first. Then it was more a matter of resisting, holding them back so as many people as possible could escape Earth," she scooted closer to him and he wrapped his arm over her shoulders. "During one mission, we were sent to clear an area of the city, to make sure no civilians were trapped. We were driving there when we were attacked. The flipped our vehicle over, picked the soldiers from my unit out of it one by one. We fired at them, of course. Two of us managed to get out of the vehicle but they spotted us. They threw the vehicle at us. I pushed the other soldier out of the way but didn't get out of the way myself. Not in time," her voice broke and she sniffed. He kissed her head and caressed her back, trying to comfort her in silence. "The vehicle landed on my right leg."

Before he could stop himself, his other hand was again on her right thigh, touching it lightly with the tip of his fingers.

"I lost it," she whispered. "I had never felt so much pain, RJ. I fainted almost immediately." She sniffed again, now crying freely. "I woke up and my leg was there. But I knew something was wrong. I knew I had lost my leg, I had felt the vehicle crush it completely. There was no way this," she pointed at her leg. "was my leg."

"It's a prosthetic."

"It's more than a prosthetic. They put it back."

He ran his fingers up and down her thigh again, a soft and loving touch. "There is no scar."

"No, I don't even know where the leg I was born with ends and the leg they printed on begins."

He kept caressing her leg. He kissed her head again. "It's impossible to tell."

"Are you sure?"

"I can't tell."

She moved away from him and looked into his eyes. He was being honest. Completely and absolutely honest. "You really can't tell?"

"No. To me is just a beautiful leg," he offered a small smile, which she ignored. "What is it made of?"

"I have no idea. Before I entered combat, my body was scanned thoroughly. Bone, muscle, skin, nerve endings, blood vessels, organs, DNA. Everything was scanned in great detail."

"To create prosthetics?"

"To rebuild us, I guess," she whispered and snuggled on his side again. "I was told it took them seven days to print the new leg, because the damage was very extensive. I was put in an induced coma and left lying there, for seven days, until the robots finished recreating my lost leg." She took a deep breath and slapped his hand away from her leg. "It's not my leg! It's not real! It's fake! It's not my leg and I can tell!"

She broke down in tears and curled into a ball and he hugged her the best he could, caressing her back and kissing her hair.

"Hey, it's alright," he cooed, rocking her softly. "It's alright."

"Don't you see it?" She asked in between sobs. "My leg... it was made by robots. How can you love it if it was made by those robots you hate so much?"

"Because it's a part of you," he told her, moving her arm away so he could extend her right leg. He bent down and trailed loving kisses on it, from her hip to her ankle, and back. "I love you and I love your leg."

"It was made by robots."

"A lot of things are made by robots, Jen." He kissed her forehead again. "Besides, I don't hate all robots. I only hate the ones who were created exclusively to destroy humankind." She shook her head, tears still flowing freely from her eyes. "How can I hate the robots who gave such a brave and strong soldier her leg back?"

She looked at him as if she couldn't understand what he was saying. He kissed her on the lips, giving her a tender and loving kiss.

"I love you," he whispered.

"Don't say that."

"It's true."

"You're smitten."

"No. I was smitten when I first met you, now, I love you."

"You've known me for a week."

"A week is all I need."

"How can you just say those words like they mean nothing?"

"They mean everything, Jen. Those are the most important words you can tell someone."

"That's why you can't just say them."

"Yes, I can. There is no point in pretending we are hooking up and this is about getting some action. It's not. I like you, I admire you and, above all, I love you."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"I can't. I can't. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. You don't have any obligation to love me back. What I feel is not your responsibility and what you feel is not in my control."

"You are so weird."

"I know."

"You fascinate me."

"I would hope so."

"Kiss me."

He did and she responded intensely, putting her hand in the back of his head and pulling him closer.

"I love you," he said after they broke the kiss.

"I love you too," she whispered timidly.

"You know what I would love right now?"

"What?"

"To have this leg wrapped around my waist, while we do our thing."

"You want my fake leg wrapped around your waist while we have sex?"

"No," he said and kissed her again. "I want your leg wrapped around my waist while we make love. Do you think I have a chance of getting that?"

"You know what? I think you do."

They kissed again.

It wasn't long before RJ had both of Jen's legs wrapped around his waist.

And they both felt very real to him.


	17. Destiny

Chapter 17: Destiny.

"Good morning," Jen said.

RJ smiled coyly when she walked down the stairs. They were all scattered around the kitchen bar and she was the last one to join.

When RJ had gotten up from the bed they had shared the previous night, she had been deeply asleep, she didn't even notice he had moved.

"Sleep well?" Billy asked, unable to hold back a smirk.

"Yes," Jen said, throwing a glance at RJ, who just licked his lips and shook his head very slightly. "You?"

"Me too," Billy answered.

"Are you... younger today?" She heard Bridge ask. She looked around for him and saw him doing a handstand by the pool table.

"What-?"

"Billy," Bridge insisted. "Are you younger today?"

"By the logic of the perception of time as a linear succession of occurrences and the general belief that aging occurs incrementally as time passes, it is impossible for me to be younger today than I was yesterday, Bridge," Billy answered, looking into his coffee mug.

Jen looked at the scientist, wondering why he was using such a technical vocabulary out of nowhere. She looked at RJ again, her face puzzled. He smirked and passed her a mug of coffee.

"What he's trying to say-" The wolf master started.

"I understood him," Bridge said, moving to stand upright. "All of that's a very good point, but he still looks younger to me," the officer walked towards Billy and inspecting his face from a very close distance.

"Personal space, Bridge?" Billy said, moving his face away and pushing Bridge back softly.

Bridge turned to RJ. "You've been his friend for a while, doesn't he look younger to you?"

RJ looked at Billy, absolutely amused by the green ranger's observation powers, and shrugged. "He looks the same to me."

"Really?" Bridge insisted. "He looks like ten years younger to me!"

RJ shrugged again, while Billy looked down at his eggs, blushing. "Maybe he slept really well last night."

Bridge turned to Jen. "Does he look the same to you?"

Jen looked at Billy closely. "Well, I can't tell for sure, but I think you are onto something."

"He's not onto anything, Jen," Billy chided. "Stop playing along, we all know I'm not any younger than I was yesterday."

Jen considered asking about the incident in the park, but felt RJ's hand squeezing her thigh. She looked at him and he squeezed her thigh under the table again.

"I'm sorry, Bridge," she said, looking at the other officer. "He looks the same to me."

Bridge squinted at her and his eyes darted from her to RJ and back several times. He raised his index finger and pointed at each of them alternatively several times. He opened his mouth to say something but RJ interrupted him: "What were you reading so intently yesterday?"

Bridge blushed slightly. "It's a theory I've been working on, something that bothers me about Doctor K's disappearance, I'll share it when I have more."

"Why not share it now? Maybe we can give you fresh eyes on it," Jen offered.

Bridge shook his head. "Let me have something less... confusing."

RJ seized the silence that followed and looked at Lauren: "I have good news for you."

Lauren looked up from her eggs. "Yeah?"

"I think, I will finish repairing your morpher today."

"Do you think it will work?" She asked excitedly.

"Yes," he said with a smile. "Well, at least for morphing, I'm not sure about your symbol thing."

Chip looked up from his own breakfast. "You can't fix her symbol power?"

"I don't really get how it works, so I don't know what's wrong with it or how to fix it," RJ looked at them and gave them an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright, you're doing everything you can," Lauren told him with a smile. "Thank you."

"I'll try to fix your symbol power too," RJ told her. He looked at Chip. "Your magic powers, dude-"

"I know," Chip interrupted. "My powers only work if I truly believe in them, and right now, I don't."

"We'll work on that," Lauren told him with a smile. He smiled back at her. RJ failed miserably to contain a smile at the sight.

Lauren looked at her boss and blushed. "He... he needs a new Vida. I think that could help with his powers."

"He needs a new life?" Bridge asked. Everybody looked at him with confused expressions. "Well Vida is Spanish for life..."

"Vida was my very best friend," Chip cleared. "She was killed by Venjix," he whispered, crestfallen.

"Oh, I'm sorry I brought it up."

"It's alright," Chip said. He looked at Lauren. "I don't need -or want- a new Vida, Lauren, but I won't say no to a new best friend."

"That's settled then," RJ said with a smile. "Billy?"

"Yes?"

"Your morpher will probably be ready today too."

"Great," Billy said with an absolute lack of enthusiasm.

"Why are you in such a bad mood today?"

"I didn't sleep very well."

That ended the conversation for the remainder of breakfast and when they finished, Lauren and Chip offered to clean up while the others moved on to work on the lab.

Bridge immediately sat in front of Jen's computer terminal and stared reading his never ending list of items.

Jen got to work on the surveillance cameras, scanning them for any sign of Venjix or its robots the device she had set up could have overlooked.

RJ promptly snapped his protective glasses on and started welding the morphers.

Billy approached him. "Bridge is right," he whispered. "I'm only about ten years younger."

RJ looked up from the morpher and smiled. "It'll be fine, Billy."

"Are you sure?"

"I wasn't a teenager when I fought as a Power Ranger, man. You have to trust me, your age, your body's age, has nothing to do with the powers."

"How do you know that?"

"I've seen older rangers. Besides, look at Jen. She's not a teenager and she has no problem morphing. You will be fine."

Billy looked at him and sighed. "Fine, I trust you. How's the morpher coming along?"

"Just great, take a look!" RJ said, offering him the device he was working on.

"Where did you get the smartphone?"

"I used mine."

"Robert, you shouldn't ha-" RJ interrupted him, raising a hand.

"It's nothing, besides, I truly hated that thing. It's so intrusive!"

Billy handed the morpher back and RJ connected it to the device Billy had brought the day before.

"Now, just connecting it to the condenser so I can create a working link to the morphing grid and we are donzo," RJ announced with a smug expression.

"Do you have welding eye protection?"

"Somewhere, why?"

"You should put it on, the connection to the morphin grid through this device causes a flash of very bright light."

"Oh," RJ said, looking around for his dark eye protection. "Thanks for the heads up."

"Jen, Bridge and I should probably leave the lab while you do that, as a safety measure," Billy said loud enough for the police officers to hear him.

"What?" Bridge asked from the other side of the lab.

"RJ is going to connect the morphers to the morphing grid, it can be dangerous, we should get out of the lab until he's done."

"Dangerous?" Jen asked, looking at RJ.

"Not as dangerous as me," RJ assured her with a smile. Once again, Bridge's eyes darted fast from one of them to the other.

"Won't you need help?" She insisted.

"I've done it before," he told her and chuckled.

He turned to the table where he was working on the morphers and Billy opened the door, indicating to the other two they should leave.

They exited the lab and closed the door behind them.

"Will he be alright?" Jen insisted.

"Yes," Billy said. "It's only a risk of a very bright light, Jen, snow blindness."

"Alright."

Bridge walked up to Jen and, in a whisper that could be from embarrassment or complicity, he asked: "Are you interested in RJ?"

"Sorry?"

"Are you into RJ?" Bridge looked at her and blushed. "I mean, are you _romantically_ into RJ?"

It was Jen's turn to blush. "How did you—why would you-?"

"when you are… with somebody… romantically… your auras… they kinda… mix," Bridge tried to explain, looking at the floor and using far more hand gestures than necessary. "And yours are… well… still mixed."

Jen let out a long breath and put her hand on Bridge's shoulder. "Yes, RJ and I had a' she pauses trying to frame the words correctly 'we had a romantic night last night," she admitted, there was no point denying it. "Please, let's keep it between us, even we are not sure what to do with what happened." Bridge nodded, still looking at the floor. "Bridge you didn't do anything wrong, you just… saw what was there."

"Right."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Is RJ's aura still wrong?" She asked. "Like you mentioned before?"

Bridge looked at her, his expression sad. "Yeah. He still has a hole in his aura," he whispered. "And the anger is still there. It's just as bad, nothing has changed."

Jen nodded and then smiled at him. "I didn't expect it to change, Bridge. I'm just wondering if there's anything we can do for him."

Bridge shrugged and walked away from her, towards Chip and Lauren.

Billy moved closer to her, with a smirk. "He got you to say yes, then?"

"Sorry?"

Billy gave her a knowing look. "I know that man," he said, pointing in the direction of the lab. "Women, men, he shakes them off with a long stick when he doesn't want them, when he does, they usually have a hard time saying no to that smile. And he had his eye on you from the moment he saw you."

"He didn't invite me," she said. "I offered."

"Alright," Billy said with a chuckle. "Whatever gets you two through this."

"There's no point in pretending this is a secret, is there?"

"It's the worst kept secret ever," Billy told her and shook his head. "You both walked out of the same room this morning."

Jen looked at Lauren and Chip who were finishing cleaning up the kitchen. "Do you know them?" Billy shook his head. "I wonder what's his story with them."

"I've wondered what's RJ's story with, well, everything, since I met him. But he's a closed book, it's impossible to know anything about him if he doesn't want you to know it."

"Yeah, I noticed, but-"

In that moment, there was a soft bang coming out of the lab and a very bright light escaped through the very thin cracks of the door.

"I'm alright!" RJ yelled from the inside. "Stay outside, I'm not done!"

Jen looked at Billy and he just shrugged.

"That man, seriously," Jen whispered, shaking her head. "I was saying, you can know just as much about someone from what they don't tell you."

"Like what?"

"I still haven't figured it out completely, but I think he may have lost a younger sibling, or even a child, who knows."

"You know this how?"

"From the way he treats Lauren and Chip," she said. "Even Bridge. You haven't noticed? He's almost—"

"Father-like," Billy completed. "Yes, I've noticed. I always assumed it was his master state of mind." Billy looked in the direction of the lab and shook his head. "Robert is too young to have lost a child old enough to compare to Chip or Lauren. Maybe it was a younger sibling or a student."

"Or a close friend," Jen whispered, remembering what RJ had told her the night before. "Well, we won't know until he tells us, I guess."

"Yeah. Although, I did ask about-"

There was another bang and another flash of light from inside the lab. This time, Lauren and Chip approached the other three, interested in the results.

"Do you think he managed?" Chip asked Lauren. She shrugged.

"I'm sure he had no problem," Billy assured them.

The door to the lab opened and RJ walked out with a smug smile. He offered Billy his old smartphone. "Dr. Cranston." Billy took the device and smiled. The phone didn't seem to have anything different to it, but the screen only showed his old wolf power coin over a blue background. "Morphing into a Power Ranger," RJ said with a grandiose hand gesture. "There's an app for that." He laughed at his own joke. Billy chuckled and shook his head, looking at his new morpher. RJ turned to Lauren. "Miss Shiba," he called. She approached him. "I believe you will find everything you need here," he handed her the morpher and when she took it, he straightened. "That morpher, Lauren, gives you the powers of the red samurai ranger."

"I know," she whispered, looking at the device, fascinated.

"It makes you the red ranger, Lauren," RJ repeated.

"Just like my father."

"Exactly," RJ put his hand on her shoulder. She looked at his face. "It makes you the leader, Lauren. The leader of this team."

All color abandoned Lauren's face immediately and she let go of the morpher as if it were on fire. RJ caught it before it hit the ground and forced it back into her hands.

"No, no, no…" Lauren was shaking her head, terrified, and she kept pushing the moprher back into RJ's hands.

"Lauren," RJ whispered, running his hand over her hair. "It does, by tradition, you know this."

"I—I can't," she told him, still shaking her head. "RJ, I can't."

"Yes, you can. You are perfect for it."

She took a step back and bumped against Bridge, who offered her a small smile. She shook her head at him as well and pushed him out of the way, to make a run for the door.

RJ rolled his eyes and handed her morpher to Chip before running after her. He caught up with her right outside the garage door and they hear her yelling: "I can't! You can't make me! I'm not ready! I'm not good enough! I can't lead this team!" RJ walked back into the garage and they saw he had thrown her over his shoulder and was casually walking back inside, as if she didn't weight a single pound.

"Lauren," he started, putting her down. "Listen to me."

"I'm not good enough to be the leader of this team."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm not and you know it, you know how scared of Grinders I am—"

"I also saw you overcome your fear and fight them, Lauren."

"You are all more experienced than me, I have never lead a team of rangers."

"Then this is a very easy team to start with," he said, grabbing her by the shoulder. "Lauren…"

"I am not a true red ranger! I don't deserve to be a red ranger!"

"I have never met a red ranger who did, Lauren" Billy told her. She looked at him as if he were insane. "And I've met plenty of them."

"You can't just throw me into the fray like this…" She pleaded to RJ, who smiled and hugged her.

"You trained all your life for this, Lauren. It is your destiny to lead a team of rangers to defeat a great evil and protect humankind."

"I failed against Master Xandred…"

"Maybe you weren't supposed to defeat him, Lauren," RJ told her. He let go of the hug and grabbed her by the chin to make her look at him. "Maybe you are supposed to defeat Venjix, leading this team."

"What if I fail again?"

"What if you don't?"

"I can't, RJ, I'm too scared."

"We all are," he told her. "And that's why we will win."

She looked at him, her face pleading, tears streaking down her face. "I can't do it."

"You are meant to, Lauren. You can do it, I know you can do it."

"Don't make me."

"I trust you, Lauren," he told her. "I know you can do this. You are a warrior and you know what to do," she shook her head again. "I trust you with my life, Lauren. I know you can do this."

Lauren looked into his eyes for a few seconds and he smiled at her. She smiled back and took a deep breath. "I won't fail you."

"I know," RJ said, stretching his arm so Chip could give him Lauren's morpher back. "Your warrior spirit is inside you, Lauren, not in your sword. You can do this," he put the morpher in her hand and she looked down at it.

She opened the morpher and turned away from them. "Symbol power!" she called, tracing an invisible symbol in the air. "Fire!" She ordered and a wall of flames burst out of thin air in front of her, fading away after a second. "My symbol power works!" He turned to RJ and hugged him. "You fixed my symbol power!"

"No, honey," he told her, rubbing her back while he hugged her. "You fixed you symbol power. I'm very proud of you."

Billy leaned towards Jen and whispered: "Master."

Jen shook her head and replied: "Father."


	18. The wolf who cried wolf

Chapter 18 - The wolf who cried wolf

Later that day, in the middle of the empty garage space, Lauren stood in front of Chip and took a deep breath. He imitated her and they stared into each other's eyes, focusing on what they were about to do.

The other four stood nearby, watching them. Bridge and Billy kept throwing glances at RJ and Jen, and Jen was fidgeting. RJ was calmly looking at his employees, looking rather excited.

"Are you really going to let them do this?" she asked RJ, grabbing him by the arm and pointing at Chip and Lauren.

He nodded, raising his eyebrows.

"What if they get hurt?" She insisted.

"They'll be hurt," he said with a shrug.

"Are you serious?!" She was obviously exasperated by his passiveness, but RJ had no intention of stopping Lauren and Chip.

"What do you want me to do, Jen?" he said with an amused expression. "I'm not their father."

"If they want to do this, there'll be no stopping them," Billy told Jen.

"We should at least try! This is dangerous!"

RJ nodded again to acknowledge the danger, but made no effort at all to stop the experiment.

"Are you seriously just going to stand there watching?!" Jen asked the three men. RJ nodded, Billy threw a glance at RJ and shrugged and Bridge pursed his lips.

RJ licked his lips and smiled in amusement at her attitude. "What's the worst that can happen?"

She looked at him, her mouth open wide in shock. He licked his lips again, unable to contain a smirk.

"This is funny to you?!" She asked, pointing in the direction of the younger rangers.

"No," RJ said, looking at her. "You're funny to me."

She let out an exasperated sigh, shaking her head and clawing her fingers as if she wanted to strangle him. "Is 'what's the worst that can happen?' your philosophy as a Kung Fu master?"

"No," Billy said from RJ's other side. "That's his philosophy about everything."

RJ nodded. "She's not going to kill him, Jen," he told her, taking her hand in his and smiling tenderly at her.

"I hope so," Chip said. They turned to him. "Oh, you can hear me too. Because I can hear everything you're saying from here." Lauren snickered and Chip smiled at her.

"Personally, I think this is a great idea," RJ told him.

"How can you think that?"

"They trust each other, Jen," RJ told her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders affectionately. "And Lauren has no intention to hurt Chip."

"That doesn't mean-"

"It does, because her symbol power works on intention."

"Could I have some silence, please?" Lauren asked, her eyes closed. She was standing very stiff and her face was covered by a light coat of sweat. "I'm trying to focus here."

Everybody stood silently staring at her and Chip and she opened her eyes. Chip smiled at her and nodded to encourage her. She nodded back and extended her arm.

"This is a complex symbol," she told him. He nodded again. She started tracing on the air with her morpher. "Symbol power! Magic!" She yelled and slashed across the symbol to activate it.

Chip closed his eyes tight and the other four held their breath.

But nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

"I'm sorry, Chip," Lauren said with a sad face. "I guess I can't use my symbol power to give you your magic back."

"Well, we tried," he told her, putting his hand on her shoulder.

"No shortcuts," RJ told them. They looked at him and he shrugged again. "No shortcuts for us, Chip. We have to walk through the fire to get our powers back."

With that, he turned and started walking back to the lab. Jen caught up with him. "Walk through the fire?"

"Yes," he answered in a whisper. "My morpher depends on my animal spirit to work, I can't use it until I get my animal spirit back in control."

"Why not?" Bridge asked from behind Jen.

"It would be unstable, I could have little to no control over the weapon system, it could vanish in the middle of a battle... it could overpower me completely and be morphed," he shuddered. "It's not safe for anyone."

RJ walked to the work table he and Billy had set up as they tried to recover as much information from Doctor K's lab as they could.

Billy stood across the work table from RJ. "So, when are you planning to work on regaining control of your animal spirit?" He asked in a very low voice, looking down at the half-finished computer.

"Soon, I suppose," RJ replied, not looking at him. He grabbed his screwdriver and started putting pieces back on the frame.

"When I studied Kung Fu with him, RJ always told me not to be afraid of my animal spirit because it was a part of me," Billy said, obviously addressing Jen and Bridge, who moved closer to them to listen.

"Billy," RJ warned through gritted teeth.

"Look at him now," Billy added defiantly, looking straight at RJ's face. "Scared of his animal spirit."

"My animal spirit is-"

"A part of you, if I did my homework correctly," Billy reminded him. He pointed at RJ with the soldering iron he had picked up. "Perhaps it's time you stopped looking at it for what's out of balance and started looking at yourself."

Bridge flinched and moved back from them. Jen looked at him over her shoulder and then back at the pair but couldn't understand what was wrong. Bridge was obviously seeing something she couldn't.

"I'm fine," RJ replied through gritted teeth, his blue eyes bearing into Billy's. "It's the wolf-"

"When you told me to send my wolf spirit across the room to open a book in a specific page, I let it out because you assured me it would be fine. It destroyed your kitchen, remember?"

"I remember." RJ's voice was almost a growl and it was laced with contained anger. He looked down and started working on putting the computer back together. His breathing was carefully controlled, like he was trying to recover his calm.

However, Bridge swallowed hard and took another step back.

"You thought it was amusing and shrugged it off as a learning pain," Billy said, looking around the table for the wire he had to weld.

"I did because it was."

RJ seemed determined to not unclench his jaw as he spoke and he was screwing the computer parts so tightly he almost broke them. Billy dropped his tool and grabbed RJ's wrist.

"You're going to break it."

RJ let go of his screwdriver and looked up at Billy's face. "Your animal spirit was not out of control, you just didn't know how to control it, it's different."

"That's the thing. You see," Billy pointed an accusatory index finger at RJ's chest. "I think you ARE controlling your animal spirit just fine."

RJ slapped Billy's hand away. "I'm not lying about this."

"I didn't say you were," Billy said, looking into his friend's eyes. "I think you don't know you are controlling it. I think you honestly believe it's out of your control."

Bridge grabbed Jen's arm and pulled her back protectively, his eyes moving from the space over RJ's head to the space over Billy's head, as if he were watching a tennis match. Jen let him guide her further away from the wolf-spirited pair, unsure of what it was he was seeing that made him so nervous.

"What is that supposed to mean?" RJ asked, his hands gripping the edge of the work table so tight his knuckles were white.

"Have you even considered that it might be YOU who is all angry and blood-thirsty and the wolf is just following your lead?" Billy asked him.

RJ looked at Billy as if he had insulted him. He swallowed hard and looked down at the table. "Of course I have," he choked out hoarsely.

"And it didn't resonate with you as the possible answer to your problem?"

"The answer to my problem?!" RJ asked, slamming his fist against the table.

Jen saw Bridge go a shade paler and she could have sworn she could see RJ and Billy's auras too, they seemed to be glowing so faintly she wondered if she was imagining it.

RJ took a deep breath and Billy put his hands in his pockets, throwing a glance at Bridge and Jen out the corner of his eye.

"If anything, that's an explanation to my problem," RJ cleared. "Hardly the answer!"

"Have you at least looked into it?" Billy asked.

"Of course I have!" RJ snapped. "Nobody wants this to be over more than me, Billy!"

"Maybe the wolf does!" Billy snapped back.

"Enough!" Jen yelled, her hand on Bridge's shoulder. "That's enough, both of you."

Billy pointed at Jen. "That's what's wrong with your life."

"What does she have to do with anything?"

"Not just her. All the people you always have around you who refuse to call you out. You need someone who slaps you hard on the face, not someone to praise every single thing you do."

"That's not-" Jen started.

"I don't need anyone protecting me," RJ spat at her. "I'm old enough to take care of myself."

She looked at him, obviously hurt by his words and tone. "I'm not protecting you, wolf master," she hissed back, her voice laced with anger. "You two are glowing and I thought that could be dangerous," she informed him.

Billy and RJ looked at each other and realized she was right. They were glowing: RJ was surrounded by a violet mist and Billy by a blue one. And their animal spirits were floating over their heads, snarling at each other.

"I think I-" Bridge started but Jen raised a hand and interrupted him.

"No," she told Bridge over her shoulder. She looked straight into RJ's blue eyes. "Whatever it is, I'm sure the wolf master can figure it out on his own." Bridge closed his mouth and looked at her. "Since he's so good at taking care of himself."

RJ licked his lips, his eyes locked on Jen's. "Jen, I-."

"You're sorry, of course," she finished, shrugging. "Maybe Billy's onto something, you should check that bottled up anger, wolf master, it could lead you to do things you don't want to do."

"Jen," he tried to start again. "I didn't mean to-"

"You did, though, even if you didn't mean to," she told him, shrugging. "I've seen it before. I almost married it. I thought it was normal." She showed her hands in surrender. "It doesn't scare me, but you're scaring Bridge. And Bridge's here under my protection. I don't care what's wrong with you or your animal spirit, it's really not my problem, unless it threatens me or Bridge." She turned towards the door.

"Jen," RJ called after her.

"No," she turned to him and he saw her eyes were full of anger too. "You're alone in this. Whatever it is, you're on your own. I'm done with this kind of thing, I had enough of it with Alex. I can't help you and I won't even try to. This is who you are."

"No, please," He took a step in her direction but she shook her head and walked out of the room, leaving him standing there, taking deep breaths, as if he were drowning.  
The three men remained completely still and silent for a minute.

"RJ?" Bridge called.

RJ looked up and the officer noticed he was on the verge of tears. "What is it?"

"You really should have that checked," Bridge said, pointing at RJ's chest.  
"How much longer are you going to wait?" Billy asked, avoiding RJ's eye. "Until you really do something you regret?"

"Regret is the only thing I have now, Billy," RJ whispered with a broken voice.  
"Pull yourself together," Billy told him. "We need you."

"You've helped everyone here," Bridge added. "Why are you denying help to the one who needs it the most?"  
"I can't help myself," RJ whispered, two tears sliding down his cheeks from his eyes.  
"You can," Bridge told him. "You just don't want to."  
RJ closed his eyes and slammed his hands against the table again. "It's not a matter of will."  
"It is," Bridge told him.

"I want to get my spirit back in control more than anything," RJ confessed. "I am lost without it."  
"I'm not saying you don't," Bridge told him, putting his hand on RJ's shoulder. "You don't want to see, and there is no worse kind of blindness."

Bridge threw a glance at Billy and walked out of the lab. RJ and Billy stood there, on opposite sides of the working table. Billy looked at his friend and saw he was fighting back more tears.

"I'll give you some space," Billy said and moved to walk out.

RJ grabbed his arm, stopping him. "Please, don't," RJ almost begged. "I don't want to be alone."  
"You always are," Billy told him and kept walking.

RJ swallowed hard.

He started doing breathing exercises to regain his precarious calm. It took even longer than the last time.

He touched the ring hanging from his neck. If Billy and Bridge were right, he was running out of options. If his animal spirit was getting more dangerous and if he was the problem, there was only one solution.

He had to take himself out of the equation.

He closed his fist tightly around the ring and closed his eyes. "Send someone," he whispered. "Send them fast. I can't regain control over it. I'm too tired."


	19. The compassion of the Bridge

Chapter 19 – The compassion of the Bridge

Bridge walked out of the lab and found Jen in the kitchen, rinsing a mug. "Jen?"

She looked up and Bridge could see her eyes were red. "Yes?"

He walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "You said you wished there was something we could do for RJ."

"Don't hold that against me too much," she said and sniffed. She sounded bitter.

"I think I may have a way to help him."

She looked at him and straightened. "How?"

"Well, RJ's helped everyone here, he's very kind and caring to everybody around him, isn't he?"

"I guess," she shrugged. "When he's not barking angrily."

"That's not him," Bridge said but his voice sounded uncertain. "I mean, it kinda is him, it's definitely a part of him but it's not who he really is. Does that make sense?"

"Not at all," she said and crossed her arms.

It was obvious to Bridge that she was trying to look tough but was listening to his idea with great attention. She obviously cared very much about RJ.

"RJ is a very kind man, he truly is, I can see it in his aura," he swiped his gloved hand in front of his face, to demonstrate. "And he's genuinely scared of the anger he feels sometimes, it's like it drowns his true nature."

"So Billy's wrong? He can't control his animal spirit?"

"It's not his animal spirit he can't control. It's his anger."

"Let me see if I get this right: he's a genuinely kind man who can't control his anger?" Bridge nodded. "That makes even less sense, Bridge."

"RJ is scared of this anger, he perceives it as not his, but it is his."

"He thinks his anger is not his?" Jen closed her eyes and shook her head. "I'm not following, Bridge."

"He doesn't want to admit the anger is his. He doesn't want to see it, or where it comes from."

"And where does it come from? How can he not know it's him being that angry?"

"He knows but he refuses to acknowledge it."

"Why?"

"Because faking ignorance has worked for him before and he thinks it will work again if tries hard enough."

"You lost me again," she admitted. "How do you know all of this? From his aura?"

Bridge put his right index and middle fingers on his temple. "You think I'm splitting hairs; that I want to believe RJ's a good person but you're torn about it. You like him very much, you're not sure if you love him, but you want to believe he's different from Alex, but you are also almost certain he's not."

"How do you know about Alex?" She asked him.

"I have some psychic powers," Bridge explained, moving his fingers away from his temple. "They're not as developed as my other powers but they are there, especially when the thoughts are charged with feelings." He blushed and Jen smiled at him. She found rather cute the way he acted like sex and romance were something to be embarrassed about.

"Yeah, charged with feelings sounds right," she admitted. "How do you think you can help him?"

"I can show him."

"Show him what?"

"What he doesn't want to see."

Jen looked at him, trying to catch up. She didn't understand what Bridge meant by showing RJ but she hoped it would work for the best. She shrugged. "If you think it will help."

"I do."

"Then go ahead, Bridge. You don't need my permission."

"Thanks," Bridge told her with a smile. "For trusting me."

"You're a great man, Bridge Carson." She said, putting her hand on his shoulder and smiling at him.

Later that day, RJ was cooking dinner for everybody again, with ingredients Chip and Lauren kept bringing over from the pizza parlor.

He had remained silent and serious, focused on what he was doing and ignoring the animated conversation taking place a few feet from him.

Jen looked at him and her heart shrunk a little. She hadn't realized how much she liked the vivacious, smiling chef until he turned into this taciturn and serious one. She missed his laughter and wished she could kiss him back to his usual self.

She noticed Bridge was also staring at RJ, his green eyes sharp. She noticed he kept swiping his hand in RJ's direction, trying not to be too obvious.

RJ looked up and his blue eyes, dark and almost violet again, found hers. She held his gaze but didn't smile at him. He looked away from her, his attention back to the meat he was working on.

Bridge got up from the couch and walked towards the fridge. He opened the door and poured himself a glass of water. He pretended to drink it and Jen saw him swipe his hand in RJ's direction again, his facial expression getting puzzled.

RJ turned to put the meat in the oven and caught Bridge reading his aura.

"Everything alright, Bridge?" He asked, as he put the platter in the oven.

"Yeah," Bridge answered, nodding repeatedly and walking back to the rest of the group. He sat next to Jen.

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"Something's different with his aura," he whispered. She raised an eyebrow. "It's still contracted and blackish but it's like… pulsating."

"Pulsating?"

"Yes, it's like it shines very bright and away from him for a couple of seconds and then comes back to normal," Bridge explained. "Like a—"

"Beacon," RJ completed from the kitchen. Jen and Bridge looked at him and Chip, Lauren and Billy stopped talking and turned to the chef as well. "I learned a technique at the Pai Zhua, it's called the Swoop Technique. Master Swoop is blind, and the technique he created focuses on enhancing the other senses, including the hearing," RJ explained, his gaze fixed on Jen.

Chip, Lauren and Billy looked at the other two and Jen swallowed hard. "That doesn't mean you can eavesdrop on other people's conversation."

"No, it doesn't," RJ said, drying his hands with a towel. "But the fact that said conversation is about my aura does."

"Why is it pulsating?" Jen asked, getting up.

"None of your business," RJ said, putting the towel on the counter. "It doesn't threaten you or Bridge."

"Why is your aura pulsating like a beacon?" she asked again, not willing to step back an inch.

"Because I'm sending a signal."

"To whom?"

"None of your business."

"How do I know you're not signaling Venjix?"

"Because I'm not."

"How do I know you're not?"

"Because I say so."

"I don't trust you."

"You shouldn't sleep with people you don't trust."

"Too little too late."

"The reason my aura is pulsating is my business, you told me you were done. You said I was on my own, and I'm sorting it out on my—" RJ was interrupted by Bridge letting out a loud sob.

He looked away from Jen to look at Bridge and she turned as well. Bridge was crying hard. He was sobbing and shaking, tears streaming down his face. He looked at RJ through the tears, put his face in his hand and started crying harder, shaking and wailing.

"Bridge!" Jen yelled, running to him. RJ was right after her. "What's wrong?" She asked, caressing his hair.

Bridge couldn't answer. He just kept crying, wailing in genuine sorrow, as if he had been told his mother had died.

RJ moved past Jen and kneeled in front of Bridge. He grabbed his wrists and pulled them away, so he could see his face. He was slobbering down his chin, snot coming out of his nose. Bridge wasn't faking, he was truly crying with genuine pain.

"Bridge," RJ whispered, running a hand over Bridge's hair and caressing his back. He sat next to Bridge and wrapped an arm over his shoulders. "What's wrong?" His voice was soft and kind, very different from the one he had been using with Jen seconds before.

"How?" Bridge choked out between sobs, looking at RJ's face. "How?"

"How what?" The master asked, concern showing in his face.

"Much… pain…" Bridge asked him, between wails. He put his forehead on RJ's chest and started wailing louder.

"I don't understand, Bridge."

Bridge took a couple of deep breaths to regain a bit of control but failed. Tears kept streaming down his face like he was being tortured. "You… much… pain…"

RJ looked even more confused. "What?"

"Your life…" Bridge started sobbing again and he let out a wail of genuine pain.

"Bridge," Jen whispered, sitting next to him and caressing his back. "Bridge, stop this. Stop. It's not working."

"Pain… sorrow… heartbreak…" Bridge whispered between sobs. He grabbed RJ's shoulder and started wailing again.

RJ closed his eyes and licked his lips. He wrapped his arms around Bridge and caressed his hair again. He understood. "Stop, Bridge," he requested in a soft whisper. "That's not your pain to feel."

"So… much…"

"It's not yours to feel, Bridge," RJ repeated. "Stop this, you're hurting yourself."

"Not… mine…"

"No, it isn't. It's mine," RJ grabbed Bridge's head making the psychic cry harder and wail louder. Bridge collapse against RJ's chest again, shaking as he cried.

The other four looked at the pair, with tears in their own eyes. Jen wasn't sure if she was crying for Bridge or for RJ.

RJ closed his eyes, wrapped his arms around Bridge and started rocking him softly, cooing him. "Stop, Bridge, it's too much to handle." He had tears running down his cheeks into his stubble. "You don't deserve to go through this—"

"You… do?" Bridge asked, looking up at him. RJ couldn't hold his gaze. "Look… me…" Bridge pleaded. RJ opened his eyes and looked into his, as he started shaking with his own sobs. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Compassion… me… not… yourself?" Bridge tried to ask, the crying still so hard it kept him from talking normally. RJ closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. "Not… mine…"

"No, Bridge, it's mine. It's all mine," RJ said, kissing Bridge's hair.

"How?"

RJ caressed Bridge's back again. "Please, stop this. Stop right now. It will only get worse."

"So… much…"

"Don't do this to yourself, Bridge," RJ pleaded, holding Bridge tighter. "You don't deserve this."

"Neither… you…"

RJ opened his eyes and in his despair looked around for the others to help him stop Bridge, but they were gone. He was alone with Bridge. "Bridge, my life," RJ swallowed, choking on a sob as well. "My life has been… complicated." Bridge wailed again. "Bridge, stop, please, don't put yourself through this."

"Yourself… through…"

"No, I don't, Bridge. I don't. Not anymore."

"It's… there…"

"I know it's there, Bridge. I get hurt, it happens. I just…" He let go of Bridge and sighed. "Can't fall in that pit again."

RJ looked at Bridge and he felt himself crumble. He started taking big gulps of air, trying to push it all back, away, down. There was so much and it was all coming back to him at once, like a wave threatening to drown him. Bridge wailed again and that was the last push RJ needed.

He was drowned by all the pain and fear he had felt in his life. He cried every single tear he had held back for years. So many years. He let out every wail he had ever swallowed. He shook. He put his face in his hands and let himself get drowned by it all at last. There was no stopping it, now that it was out. He surrendered to it and it engulfed him, like a monster of darkness finally catching up to him and swallowing him whole.

Bridge sat up and wrapped his arms around him. He let go of RJ's mind and calmed down almost instantly. It really wasn't his pain at all, it was all RJ's. He rubbed RJ's back while the chef cried in the most absolute despair, without any reserve.

"You are a kind man, RJ," Bridge told him. "You're a good person," RJ shook his head while he cried and Bridge grabbed his shoulders and shook him. "You are! You are!" RJ shook his head again. "Robert James Finnson, you are a great man and you deserve peace." Bridge's words pierced through RJ's pain like a shard of glass. "Enough is enough, Robert."

RJ looked up at him, his face contorted and tear streaked. "Bridge…"

"Your pain," Bridge told him. "You ignored it when you were feeling it, you ignored for what feels like hundreds of years, but you couldn't ignore it a single minute when you saw me feeling it." Bridge hugged RJ tightly again. "You're compassionate to everybody around you but not to yourself. Never to yourself. Why?"

RJ sniffed, trying to regain some capacity to talk. "I don't…" He started breathing deeply, to regain his composure.

"You don't what? Deserve it?"

"How to handle it."

"Compassion?"

"The pain, Bridge," RJ admitted. He pushed away from Bridge, licked his lips and dried his cheeks with his hands. "If I let myself admit to it, it consumes me."

Bridge looked at him and shook his head. "If you don't, it gets worse. It turns into anger and then it's the anger that consumes you. Doesn't that scare you?"

"More than anything."

RJ's hand wrapped around the ring hanging from his neck and Bridge's eyes followed it.

"Who are you sending a signal to?" Bridge asked, suddenly feeling he should fear for RJ's life.

"The Pai Zhua."

"What for?"

"I need them to do something for me. Something I can't do by myself."

"What?"

RJ shook his head and got up from the couch, though he felt his legs couldn't carry his weight. "Let me rest," he whispered and walked in the direction of his room. "The meat should be done in twenty minutes."

Bridge sat there, watching him walk away. He had the impression RJ was an old soul and that he was tired. Very tired.

Maybe too tired.

And definitely too old.


	20. Rise

As the last light of the day started to disappear from the window, RJ sat on the edge of his bed with his back to the bedroom door, looking down at the floor. The incident with Bridge had been too exposing and raw and he had felt completely naked in front of the entire team. He wanted to run and hide, to never see any of them ever again, especially Bridge.

However, he wished he still had Jen. He wanted to go out of his room and beg her to keep him company, to just sit there, caressing his back, holding his hand. But she had been still angry at him the last time he had seen her and he doubted she was in the mood to put up with him and his misery.

He sighed. He was so tired. He just wanted to stop everything and finally rest.

Tears had begun running down his cheeks again and he had chosen not to stop them. He was so tired of holding them back. He was so tired of pretending he was alright.

He was so tired of everything and this time he had nowhere to go.

He cried in silence, remembering all those times pain and sorrow had ripped his heart and soul to shreds and how he had gone back to the Pai Zhua academy each time, only to be told to accept who he had become and to learn to find happiness in himself.

All those times he had thrown cups of scalding tea at Master Mao's face and had seen the other man remain still and calm as if that happened all the time. He had been so angered at the sight of Mao just sitting there being calm when his world kept falling apart around him, he would have launched at him to hit him as hard and as often as he could if he had had any hope of even making it to Mao's face, but he had learned rapidly he didn't have that hope and had opted for throwing things against the walls and training frantically for weeks on end.

Finally, after countless incidents like those and some even worse, he had accepted his reality and had surrendered to it. But Master Mao had been lying. The pain never went away, nothing became easier. Happiness didn't come to him from acceptance.

He sighed when he saw a flash of golden light fill the room and he didn't need to turn around to know the undying spirit of Master Mao, safe from Venjix in the spirit world, had come to him, probably because he had been thinking about him so intensely.

"Who's coming?" RJ asked, skipping all pleasantries. He wasn't in the mood to bow to the older master, to make small talk with him or even to start a philosophical discussion. He just wanted that one answer.

"My answer is the same it has been every time you have activated that beacon, Robert," Mao said in his deep and calm voice, using RJ's full name to emphasize the point this was a conversation they had had long before 'Robert' had become 'RJ'. "Nobody's coming."

"Then why did you even give it to me?!" RJ asked angrily, straightening his back but not turning to look at Mao.

"Because one day you may need it for real," Mao answered in the same calm voice. "But right now, it's not that moment."

RJ turned, his anger overcoming the sadness he had been feeling just seconds ago. "How can you say that?! You don't know what I've been going through!"

"Do you?" Mao asked.

"I've been fighting a war on two fronts! Fighting this out of control beast inside me as well as the end of the world, the literal end of the world, Mao. I can't do both things. I don't want to fight anymore. I can't fight the wolf anymore."

"You haven't fought against the wolf for a single minute," Mao accused.

"Excuse me?" RJ snarled.

"You're tired, sad and lonely. You have faced a great loss and you have, once again, let your feelings drown you and your animal spirit. That seems to be the one lesson you simply cannot learn," Mao's face was stern and his voice reflected that. "As always, you want an easy way out of your suffering and I will not be the one to give it to you."

"An easy way out?" RJ hissed, anger seeping out of him like poison. His eyes turned violet and he showed Mao his teeth as he spoke. "You think this is the easy way out for me?"

"Yes. Activating that beacon has always been your attempt for an easy way out of the darkness," Mao accused. "You have to walk through the darkness and come out the other end, Robert, this time, just like all the previous times."

"This time it's different," RJ started. "This time I really can't control it. Whether I want it or not, I can't do it, I've been trying to but it just-"

"Your animal spirit is under your absolute control," Mao sentenced, his gaze on the wolf master's darkened eyes. "Just like it always has been."

RJ sat there, looking at him in shock. "It's impossible. It's impossible, it's done all these terrible things... Bridge says it's black now...it's impossible."

"This fight is not against the wolf, Robert. The wolf surrendered to your command a long time ago and it has followed your lead since then. This fight is against yourself like it always has been," Mao informed him. "And just like every other time, you gave up before you started fighting, even if it's a fight for your life."

"I can't regain my peace, master," RJ whispered, his eyes welling up again. "I'm too tired," the despair in his voice only grew as he kept talking. "It's been too long. I've told too many lies, kept too many secrets, lost too many loved ones. I don't have it in me to get up again," RJ looked at the other master and started crying again. He bowed to the older man and pleaded with a broken voice: "Please, I'm begging you, take me out of my misery."

Master Mao looked at him and moved closer to the younger man. He put his hand on his shoulder and whispered: "No."

"Master, please," RJ begged. "I never wanted this, I can't do it anymore, please just let me-"

"I said no, Robert, fight this battle! It's a battle for your life!" Mao ordered so forcefully it was almost a yell. "Just like every other time, you will stand again, you will lick your wounds and you will get back to the battlefield," he ordered. Then his face and voice softened. "You are one of my strongest masters, inside and out, and I know you will rise again."

"I'm alone, Mao. I could never rise alone, you know this. I don't have it in me, I never have."

"You are not alone, Robert. Maybe you are not surrounded by the people you wish were here with you, but you are not alone."

RJ looked up at him and fixed his eyes on the other man's. He licked his lips nervously and took a deep breath. "Let me tell them," he requested in a whisper.

Master Mao looked at the younger master for a few seconds, his face completely neutral. RJ never moved his eyes away from his, trying to keep his own face neutral, even if he was still crying. "Let me tell them, let me get it out of my chest. Let me tell them so they can help me."

After what felt like an eternity, Mao spoke: "Are you sure you want to tell them?"

"Yes."

"Why them?"

"Because they're here now and they can help me."

Their sights locked again and Mao could see the same despair and sorrow, that same desperation that always filled RJ's eyes when he activated the beacon and whenever he asked for that permission.

"Turn the beacon off, make peace with your animal spirit," he instructed. "And only after you have achieved that, you may tell them."

RJ's eyes widened, showing how incredulous he was about that response and his face lit up with a long-lost hope. "Thank you, Master."

"A Pai Zhua Master's spirit can't be destroyed, Robert," Mao reminded him. "The peace you seek will not come to you that way. Now, rest. Your battle is a long way from over, Wolf Master."

Feeling a knot in his throat, RJ simply nodded and bowed and the other master disappeared in a flash of golden light, leaving him alone in the room.

RJ considered changing into his sleeping clothes, but he was too tired for that too. He kicked off his shoes and lay on the bed, on top of the covers, exhausted in every possible way. He turned off the light and closed his eyes.

He fell asleep almost immediately and soon he was facing his animal spirit, the black dire wolf Bridge had said he had seen around him. It wasn't even the humanoid form he had faced before, this was an actual monstrous black wolf, with bright yellow eyes and huge paws, covered completely in thick black fur.

He looked at the animal, which was growling angrily and baring its teeth. They were both breathing heavy and RJ knew this wasn't going to be easy.

But it had to be done.

"I'm sorry, my friend," he told the wolf with a soft voice. The animal snapped its jaws at him and RJ flinched. He took a deep breath and a step towards the animal. "I led you astray and turned you into this monster. You didn't deserve that. We didn't deserve that." The wolf snapped its jaws again, growling louder. "We are going to set things right, you and me," The wolf growled and snapped its jaw again. "It's going to be alright, we will be who we were before. I promise."


	21. Whole Again

Chapter 21 – Whole again

RJ grunted as he crashed on the ground and he immediately rolled to one side, before the wolf crashed on him again.

He was fighting his animal spirit in the mind world, and while the spirit was unable to physically kill or maim him while there, its attacks still hurt, and hard as he may try, he had been unable to reason with the creature. Still, he didn't want to fight it or to be violent against it, but the wolf didn't seem to share that initiative.

"Please, just let me-" The wolf launched at him again, making him jump over it and interrupting him mid-sentence. "I'm trying to apologize here!" He yelled, exasperated.

The wolf didn't seem interested in apologies and hit him hard on the back, sending him face-first to the ground. RJ turned around and pressed his forearms against the wolf's neck to keep it from tearing his throat out, assuming it would hurt very much, permanent or not.

"Listen to me!" RJ yelled at the wolf who kept pushing hard against his forearms, trying to reach something to bite. "Please! Listen to me!" The wolf growled and snapped its jaws so close to RJ's face, he could feel the animal's hot breath in his eyes. "This isn't you!" RJ yelled and pushed hard, forcing the wolf to move back enough so he could stand up. "It's me! It's all me!"

The wolf howled and launched at him again, RJ moved to the side, panting in exhaustion. He became aware he missed Flit's cheering voice, as he had heard it the last time he had fought his animal spirit. He felt like he had been struggling for years.

He needed a new plan, since apologizing to the wolf was obviously not going to work. He needed to find a way to make the wolf tame again, to make it fight by his side, not against him. He needed a way to join with it again, but he had never done it alone and he had no idea of what to do.

He noticed he hadn't been attacked in a couple of seconds and swallowing hard, turned around, looking for the animal.

He found it sitting behind him, just looking at him. It wasn't growling or snapping its jaws and RJ got temporarily worried that it was waiting for the right time to tear him to shreds.

"Hey, buddy," he whispered, taking a step towards the animal. He could have sworn the animal looked smaller. "Listen, I know I've been blaming you for a lot lately and I'm honestly sorry because that wasn't fair."

The wolf just sat there, looking at him, its eyes turning less yellow. It cocked its head to the side as if it were listening to something and RJ closed his eyes, listening intently, trying to understand what was making the animal so tame, so suddenly.

He could hear very soft whispering but he couldn't make out anything about the voice or what it was saying. It sounded very far away.

He opened his eyes and took another step towards the wolf. The animal was salt-and-pepper again, and the size of a normal wolf. Its head was still cocked, listening peacefully. RJ walked all the way to it and the wolf looked up at him, straightening its head. RJ extended a hand and the wolf whimpered.

"Hey, buddy," RJ whispered in turn. He also felt calmer and more relaxed. He felt a way he hadn't felt in a long time: loved and cared for. He sat in front of the wolf and the animal stood up. RJ took in a sharp breath, but the animal spirit was without a doubt no longer the monster it had been a couple of minutes ago. He extended his hand and the wolf stepped to him, resting its snout on his shoulder. "Hey," RJ whispered happily. With tears of joy forming in his eyes, he ran his hand over the animal's back. "Welcome back, buddy," he cooed. He rested his head against the wolf's head and closed his eyes. "I missed you so much."

He stayed there, holding his animal spirit quietly, feeling loved and at peace for the first time in what felt like forever. He felt protected instead of attacked and he felt whole again.

"It's great to have you back," he told the wolf. "But our battle is not over, buddy. We have an enemy to defeat out there and we have to give it everything we've got." The wolf howled softly. "I know, we have suffered so much. But we have new friends and they need our help," he buried his face in the wolf's fur and kept petting the animal. "What do you say? One more time?"

The wolf lifted his head from RJ's shoulder and howled loudly before turning into a ball of purple energy and entering RJ's chest, making him take a deep breath and wake up from the slumber he had fallen into after Mao's visit.

He opened his eyes to the moonlit room and looked at the ceiling, panting. He was covered in sweat and felt very lightheaded.

"Are you awake?" He heard a voice ask in a whisper. He turned his head to find Jen sitting on the bed next to him, running her hand over his sweaty forehead.

"Yes," he choked. She kissed his forehead and brushed his hair away from his face. "Weren't you mad at me?"

She smiled sheepishly and said: "Let me get you some water."

Before she could get up to do so, he took her hand and pulled her to him, kissing her deeply on the lips. She smiled at him but still said nothing and left the room to get the water.

While she was gone, RJ sat up slowly -he still felt lightheaded- took off his shirt and let it fall on the floor next to the bed. It was drenched in sweat, as were his pants, which was weird because it was supposed to be winter. He assumed he had been having cold sweats in his sleep and judging by the slight headache he had, his sleep had been uneasy for quite a while.

His hand went to his neck and he found the silver ring hanging from the cord there. He closed his eyes and whispered into it: "Stand down. It's under control."

Afterwards, he undid the knot behind his neck and took off the necklace completely, setting it on the bedside table.

Jen came back with the water as he was taking off his pants.

"Nightmares?" She asked, ignoring his actions.

"Not exactly," he said with a small smile. He pulled the covers back and got under them, sitting against the headboard. He looked at Jen and smiled at her, unsure whether to invite her to join him.

She approached the bed from the other side, set the glass of water on the bedside table, took off her shoes and pants, pulled the covers back and slid under them, sitting next to him. RJ smiled brightly when she handed him the glass of water.

"Thank you," he said and kissed her lips lightly. He drank the water in one single gulp and set the glass on his bedside table. "How long have you been here?"

"After what happened with Bridge, I was worried about you. I went to check that Bridge was fine and when I was sure he was, I came here to check in on you. You were asleep but you were tossing and turning, whimpering and sweating. It was obvious you weren't exactly resting well. I tried to wake you but I guess you were too exhausted or too deeply asleep. So I started-"

"Whispering to me," he finished, taking off her hairband, letting her brown hair fall down her back.

"Yes," she admitted, blushing slightly. " I didn't know what else to do, so I caressed your hair and your face and kept telling you everything was going to be fine and you were going to be alright and I guess it worked because you stopped tossing and turning."

"I was fighting my animal spirit," he told her, taking her hand in his. "It was a lost battle until something made it calm down."

"What?"

"You," he told her, kissing her hand. "I have never been able to regain control over my animal spirit by myself, I've always needed help. Your caresses, your whispers, your caring, your love... You gave me back my animal spirit." He kissed her forehead and hugged her.

"So Billy was wrong, it wasn't under your control after all?" She asked, still hugging him tightly.

"No, Billy was right," he said, pressing his forehead against hers. "But my pain was too big, my anger too strong, my wounds were too deep. There was no way I could have gotten over them by myself."

"How did I help?" She asked, moving back from him to look at his face. "I don't understand."

"I wasn't lying when I said I love you, Jen." He kissed her tenderly on the lips. "It wasn't pillow talk, I was being honest. I love you." He kissed her again to emphasize the point. "And no matter what you say, you love me too, or you wouldn't have erased all that pain and anger from the wolf."

She smirked and looked at his chest. Her hand touched his neck. "You took off the ring."

"I don't need it anymore."

"Why not?"

"I've got you," he said, pulling her close and kissing her passionately.

They broke the kiss and she caressed his hair, with a sad look on her eyes. "RJ, I can't stay here with you forever, you know that."

"I don't need you to," he said with a smile. "Just now is fine."

He settled down more comfortably on the bed, lying down to sleep, and pulled her to him. With a little smile, she took off her shirt and bra and then lay down next to him, pressing her skin against his. They both let out sighs of pleasure.

"I know it's very selfish, considering what's at stake here, but I wish we had more time to be together," she whispered, kissing his chest.

"Maybe in another occasion," he said, caressing her hair. "Tell me about you," he requested out of nowhere after a few seconds of silence, his hand running up and down her back.

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me your last name, the city you live in, your rank at the Time Force, you know," he kissed her hair. "Tell me everything I need to know to find you again."

"RJ, I don't travel back in time often-"

"I know. Still, tell me."

"What for?"

"So I can find you again," he insisted and squeezed against his body.

"What? Like in another life or something?" She asked, looking up at him.

"Or something," he said with a smile.

"I don't see the point of pretending this is ever going to be more than it is."

"Humor me," he insisted.

She surrendered: "My full name is Jennifer Scotts, I'm a sergeant in the Time Force and I live in Millenium City."

"What year were you born?"

"2981," she answered, relaxing under his tender caresses and soft voice.

"When did you meet Alex?"

"2997, when I was at the Time Force Academy."

"And when did you become a Power Ranger?"

"The year 3000."

He closed his eyes and recited everything she had just told him.

"What was the point of that?" She asked with a chuckle after he opened his eyes.

"Like I said, so I can find you again."

"What about you?"

"I don't matter," he said with a shrug.

"I want to know more about you too," she told him. "Where are you from?"

"Earth."

"That's not fair," she said, raising her upper body to have a better look at his face. "Why don't you tell me about you?"

He sighed. "I'm Dutch, my father is a sailor and wanted me to be a sailor too but my interests were elsewhere. I ended up at the Pai Zhua academy by accident and opened a pizza parlor because I thought it made the best cover for the whole Power Rangers thing."

"What does the 'J' stand for?"

"It doesn't matter," he told her, pulling her to him. "Because you don't have to find me," he kissed her deeply and while he kissed her, he gently pushed her onto her back and positioned himself on top of her. "I will find you."

"Why would you even bother?" She asked from under him.

"Because I love you," he told her and kissed her again. "I want a lifetime with you, even if it can't be this one."

"Have you always been this good at walking that thin line between romantic and cheesy?" She asked, laughing.

"Not really," he said, laughing with her. "But I practice as much as I can."

They laughed for a little while, looking into each other eyes.

"Is your wolf spirit really alright?" She asked, her hand on his chest.

"It's perfect."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I'm perfect," he told her, kissing her jaw and neck. "As long as I can kiss you and you can kiss me, I will be perfect."

"I almost feel sorry for Venjix," she whispered, as his kisses moved lower down her chest.

He stopped kissing her and looked up at her eyes, a smirk on his gorgeous face. "Me too."


End file.
